a little on how sick grows the head that has to
listen to the strains, how numbed grows the
hand that has to turn, turn, turn, that everlasting
barrel-organ! Men, with a smug
complacency, repeat, one after the other, that women
have a special aptitude for teaching; that they
are patient, willing, persuasive, and the rest;
and then, with pitiless politeness, condemn them
to grind the barrel organ for the term of their
natural lives. That men are not so eminently
fitted for the task of tuition is shown by their
losing patience half a dozen times in the course
of a lesson, and falling on the cubs they are
licking into shape and thrashing them fiercely;
but gentle, long-suffering woman is contented
to go on mildly nagging, and wrangling, and
moralising over the cubs, when they decline to
dance to the very genteelest of tunes. In the
female wards of every lunatic asylum you are
sure to meet with one or two demented school-
mistresses. I often wonder that for the one or
two, I don't meet a dozen.

Tea-time came and went; then play-hour;
then study-hour; at last, the times for reading
prayers and going to bed. Miss Floris had not
come back. Her continued absence was
common talk in the schoolroom. Among the girls,
one party, the more imaginative, speculated on
the dreadful things that would be done to a
pupil who stayed beyond her leave; another,
and more practical section, opined that Lily
would be held harmless, seeing what a favourite
she was with the authorities.

Time went on, and the Miss Bunnycastles
sat down to that supper which they were too
sick at heart to eat. The clock was on the
stroke of ten, when the outer gate bell rang.

"'Tis she! 'tis Miss Floris!" cried Barbara;
"the dear little thing!"

"The naughty little minx, rather!" added
Celia, with some asperity.

"Perhaps it isn't her fault," pleaded Adelaide;
"she may have been taken ill. But here
she is!"

The door opened, and the maid appeared, with
a scared face, announcing not Lily, but a gentleman;
and, close upon her heels, there followed,
nearly breathless with haste, nearly wild with
excitement, Jean Baptiste Constant.

"The child!" he cried; "the child, dear
ladies! Has she come back?"

A trembling negative had to be returned to
his question.

"Oh! I am ruined, I am ruined!" the Swiss
went on. "Where is she? What have you
done with her? Oh! my little, little Lily.
She has been stolen, stolen by that monster of
a woman. Malediction!"

And for a long time, this was all that could
be got out of J. B. Constant. He persisted in
declaring that he was ruined. By degrees, he
calmed down a little, and explained that, at five
o'clock that afternoon, he had seen the child
pass, in a hackney-coach, with a person in whose
company (so with much vehemence he declared)
she had no right to be. It was in Regent-
street. He had followed the coach as rapidly
as he could, and, by voice and gestures, had
endeavoured to arrest its progress. But all
was in vain. The place was Regent-street;
the time, the full tide of afternoon life. At
length, in despair, he had been compelled to
abandon the chase, vainly endeavouring to
persuade himself that he might have been mistaken.
He had made scores of inquiries—perquisitions,
he called them—in places whither he thought it
at least faintly probable that Lily might have
been conveyed; and, at length, he had come to
Rhododendron House.

The Bunnycastles could do little to
console him. They made the most of their
reluctance to allow Lily to leave; but what were
they to do? They had long hesitated, but had
at last acted on the advice of Mr. Drax, a trusted
and discreet friend.

"Curse Mr. Drax!" cried the valet, fiercely.
"Drax is a goose, a pig, a donkey!" And I am
afraid the discomfited Miss Bunnycastles felt
at that moment very much inclined to agree
with J. B. C. Drax's renown for discretion was
gone for ever.

They showed J. B. Constant the note
purporting to be in his handwriting. He flung it
from him with something very like an oath, and
a yell of rage.

"A forgery, an infamous forgery!" he cried,
distractedly. "Fool that I was, not to have
forseen the possibility of such a fraud. That
woman would do anything!"

"And whatever will your master say?"
naïvely remarked Miss Adelaide, who had been
eyeing the valet with much curiosity.

"My master!" he repeated; "burn my
master! This little angel was worth twenty
thousand masters to me."

Grief made him garrulous, but his
communicativeness was not of a nature to satisfy the
Bunnycastles. As the payments had all been
made in advance, and the customary references
dispensed with, they felt the indelicacy of pressing
him with direct questions. Very little that
was definite could be extracted from J. B.
Constant. He would mention no names; but,
when the card of Madame la Comtesse de
Prannes was shown to him, he tore it,
contemptuously, in half, and muttered, "Bah! one
of her twenty aliases."

The council remained in session until an hour
was attained quite unexampled in the annals
of this well-conducted establishment. But Lily
did not come back. Indeed, to Rhododendron
House she was not to return again. J. B.
Constant, with lowering looks, but with many
protestations of regret at having disturbed the
ladies, took his leave, saying, that if the child
did not come back, they were very welcome to
keep what remained of her wardrobe as some
slight compensation for the trouble they had
taken. And then the Bunnycastles were left
desolate. The compensation was very slight
indeed. Barbara had to mourn the loss of her
darling, and would not be comforted; and her
two more practical sisters were bound in bitterness
to acknowledge that the payments, having