of Torchester is a small seaport, where no one is likely to recognise her. There she can find a cheap and respectable lodging, and surely some way of earning her daily bread will present itself. She remembers the large college for ladies which stands high on the west cliff above the sea, and has over a hundred pupils within its warm redbrick walls. It opens its doors to aspiring young teachers too, and the Lady Principal has made the advancement of governess pupils a spécialité in her establishment. An accomplished workwoman, who is willing to make herself generally useful, will surely find some employment under that wide-spreading scholastic roof.

These thoughts are crowding into Clare's mind as she sits on the platform awaiting her train, and a longing, that amounts to passion, fills her heart.

The country-peace, quiet, rest -welcome thrice-blessed rest! O, would she were out in the familiar meadows already! She seems to see their lovely, green, undulating expanse before her. She notes the golden wealth of dandelions and buttercups. She even remembers the dear little pink daisies that nestle modestly close to the grass, at a respectful distance from their gorgeous-hued sisters. She almost fancies she can hear the distant note of the cuckoo. . . .

...

And then the landscape vanishes from her mental vision, the porter's summons recalls her to the prosaic present, and she starts to her feet as the train comes to a noisy halt in the station.

There is no music in the crunching wheels, nor in the hoarse voice of the porter, yet both sound delightful to her, for they seem to bring her one step nearer to-Torchester.

O joy! She will certainly allow herself one peep at the college

at the window from which his head used to look out, and at her own dear old home.

'Jump in, there-jump in, if you are going on!'

It is the guard's voice which recalls Clare from her visionary anticipations this time. He speaks in a sharp peremptory tone, and she, realising that his remonstrance is addressed to her, obediently enters the carriage he hastily opens for her. She is preoccupied, but by no means flurried, and she steps into the train with that slow graceful manner of moving which is not suited to the rapid requirements of railway travelling. The door is flung to with a bang, and the sudden jerk of the train, as it starts on its onward course, precipitates her almost into the lap of a girl who is sitting near the door.

Clare apologises with dignity, the other girl laughs; but her merriment cannot offend-it is genuine and irrepressible. The girls are alone in the compartment. Clare crosses over and seats herself opposite to her companion, whose honest blue eyes and healthy happy face confirm the bright impression made by the sound of her childlike laughter.

Clare, like most people of sensitive organisation, is impressionable and given to sudden sympathies or antipathies. Her instincts are generally true, as those of good women are apt to be. Faults in life breed errors in judgment. The upright nature does not incline to crooked paths.

'I am not accustomed to this jerky mode of travelling, as you must have seen,' she explains, smiling; 'thank you for catching me so cleverly.'

'That was because you fell so cleverly,' says the other. Anybody would think you'd rehearsed the business for a bit of stage effect.' Then, with a swift glance of

inquiry, Perhaps you are in the habit of rehearsing everything, like the rest of us?'

'Ono, indeed; I have never rehearsed anything in all my life,' replies Clare promptly. She still has a way of taking what is said to her au grand sérieux.

'So much the better for you, my dear,' remarks her companion, with a shrug of the shoulders, which reminds Clare curiously of Mr. Hetheringham.

'For my part, I'm sick of the very name of a theatre just now, for I've been rehearsing for four mortal hours this morning, and I was ready to drop when it was all over at last. And then I had to go down to Victoria to meet a girl who has just come back to London, after being cheated by a manager in the provinces, poor thing! Her mother was at the station too, so I might have spared myself that journey; but I did feel so sorry for Nora, she is such a simple pretty creature, just the sort a nasty old manager is sure to take advantage of. Girls who don't know how to hold their own in a theatre always get worsted by the authorities, whether it's management or principals. When Nora went off with her mother, I thought I'd come on by the Underground. It's rather fun for me. I mostly walk, but I was so tired to-day.'

'I am glad you came by this train,' says Clare cordially, for she thinks her new friend's voice as pleasant as her face.

'And I'm glad too,' replies the other, for I love looking at pretty people. I mean people who are really pretty before they get themselves up. With paint, powder, and patches any one might pass muster.'

Clare smiles as she says, 'I hope you never paint!' The idea of rouge, paint, powder, and patches is painful to her,

sana in corpore sano was her old master's constantly-reiterated teaching; and surely a healthy state of mind and body is incompatible with a false complexion and tinted eyelashes. Her companion's straightforward reply to her anxious exclamation startles her now.

'Of course I have to rouge and make up a little at night, because of the footlights-one looks too ghastly else. But I don't lay it on thick, as some of our girls do, and I never use anything but soap and water in the daytime.'

'Because of the footlights ?' echoes Clare. 'Are you really an actress, then ?'

The girl nods, laughs, and explains,

'Well, not exactly, yet; though that is what I hope to be, if I get on. I-I'm only a dancer at present.'

The consternation in Clare's grave face makes her blue-eyed companion almost nervous; but, as she continues her explanation, she speedily recovers her frank look and manner.

'It's nothing to be ashamed of,' she tells herself confidently; 'this lady evidently doesn't understand anything about the theatre.' This is a just and sensible conclusion. No girl could have vaguer notions of the stage and its votaries than Clare, who had only entered a theatre three times in her life.

'Sometimes I have a line or two to say, and mostly a song and a dance,' continues the actress.'

'I've a nice little part in the new burlesque we've been rehearsing to-day. We open with it on Saturday week; that stupid old Proserpine is really played out. It's run

for three months right off, morning performances and all complete. The next is to be Don Carlos, and I'm the Inquisitive Inquisitor. I'm always doing the spy, peeping round practicable windows, doors, curtains, and screens. I've a fine character dance with the Infanta : a full-grown boisterous infant she is, too; for Mr. Rollicks takes the part, and he's big and noisy enough to fill the stage all by himself.'

Clare had read Schiller's Don Carlos with that eccentric old master of hers long ago, and the grandeur and pathos of the tragedy had impressed her profoundly. What she now hears of this travesty shocks all her notions of the fitness of things.

'What you say sounds like nonsense,' she remarks. 'Do you mean that a grand play is ever turned into such rubbish as that on the London stage?'

'O, I wish Gran could hear you!' cries the actress; 'you and she would agree, I am sure. She calls burlesque murder, and says our style of dancing is atroce. You and she would be able to sympathise in abusing the performances at the Kaleidoscope. I do believe my grandma would take to you at once; you move and speak in the gentle dignified way she admires so much, and which she is always telling me to imitate, as it is comme il faut.'

'Is she French?' asks Clare, and thinks that accounts for this girl's vivacity and her un-English ges

tures.

'Yes, she is a Parisian, and she comes of quite a grand family too. Her parents belonged to the ancienne noblesse, and she ran away from Paris when the kings and

queens and all the other swells were guillotined. How terrible that Revolution must have been! My grandparents wore their servants' clothes or they would never have escaped. Disguised as coachman and wife they got away to Havre, and came over to England; but they were awfully, awfully poor. Later on, Gran began to give lessons in dancing and deportment. If you were to see her now, you wouldn't wonder that she has taught so many grandees in her time. She always moves gracefully. The leading ladies at the theatre are not a patch upon Granny. She taught my poor mother the same profession, regularly brought her up to it, you know; and, after a time, they made a lot of money; but my father, who was in business, and not very careful—' The girl hesitates and stammers here. She is ready and anxious to tell her own history to her pretty companion, who watches her with such wistful pathetic eyes; but she does not intend to compromise the father, whose memory has been a constant source of pain and trouble in her little home. After an awkward pause, she resumes hurriedly and vaguely, 'So all the money was lost in speculations. When my parents died, Gran had the sole care of me, and then, poor dear, she began teaching again, though she was nearly sixty years old. Wasn't that very

hard on her ?'

'Very,' says Clare promptly.

She is really interested by the odd glimpse this confiding little girl is giving her into an utterly unknown world, and the girl herself evidently enjoys talking to a sympathetic listener. Narration is at once her weakness and her strength, as is the case with many ingenuous women.

Poor old Gran had really retired from the profession, you

know, when she found she would have to make a fresh start. But when I was fourteen she had the rheumatic fever, poor dear, and that was the worst time we ever had. Since then she has not been able to work at all, and, of course, I was too young to give lessons; but soon an offer came for me to go on the stage. So I went to Manchester for twelve months with a well-to-do old pupil of Gran's. I got on very well, and after a couple of years Mr. Hoax's agent saw me there, and made me an offer to come up to the Kaleidoscope. Gran was very pleased for one reason, as I can live with her now, of course, and she looks after me; but life is rather a struggle, I find. Do you think so too, or are you one of the lucky ones that don't have to work for pennies and shillings?'

'Indeed, yes; I also have to earn my bread,' says Clare, but says no more. She is not communicative by nature. Her strength lies in silence rather than in narration. 'Tell me more about your grandmother and your home and your work at the theatre, if you don't mind. I am much interested,' she adds pleasantly; and her loquacious companion, grateful for this encouragement, continues,

can

'Well, we just contrive to get along, you see; we've enough bread-and-butter, and we manage a cup of French coffee now and then; but the luxuries of the season are out of our reach. A grilled tomato and a filleted Isole we do afford ourselves as a Sunday treat; but salmon and cucumber is always beyond us. And I am so fond of salmon !'

She laughs, the gay happy laugh which is born of youth and a good conscience.

'And where do you live?' asks Clare.

'In Dean-street, near Soho

square. I shall have to get out at Gower-street Station. And you?'

The question startles. Clare. She flushes painfully, and an odd choking sensation comes into her throat.

Where does she live?

Nowhere. She has no home; she is a wanderer, friendless, alone on the face of the earth.

Her bright vision of that journey to Torchester via Liverpool-street has suddenly faded away, and with the waning daylight her hopes of the future change into keen present anxiety.

What will become of her if she arrives at Torchester late in the evening? How can she find the modest respectable lodging she requires after dark? Who will take her in at five minutes' notice, coming as she does without introduction or recommendation? She might get a bed at the hotel; but she happens to know something of hotel charges from hearing Mrs. Steele's loud and bitter complaints on that subject. And how will her money last if she begins with such extravagance ?

'You look so sad, I am sure you are in trouble,' says her companion wistfully. 'Can I do anything to help you?'

'Gower-street, Gower-street!' shouts a clamorous porter.

'Come home with me and see my granma,' adds the girl earnestly.

She springs out of the carriage as she speaks, and holds the door open, waiting for Clare.

'My name is Susie Delane,' she says hurriedly. You can tell me yours as we go along; but do come with me: I am positive Gran will like you, and if you are not proud and want help or work, surely we might-do come.'

'Thanks,' says Clare; 'I will come.'

She speaks with sudden but grateful resolution. Then she fol