I can be;--will be!" "Lucia," asked she, that very afternoon, "will you let me take the children off your hands while Clara is busy in the morning ?" "Oh, you dear good creature?
but it would be such a _gene_! They are really stupid, I am afraid sometimes, or else I am.

They make me so miserably cross at times." "I will take them.

It would be a relief to you, would it not ?" "My clear!" said poor Lucia, with a doleful smile, which seemed to Valencia's self-accusing heart to say, "Have you only now discovered that fact ?" From that day Valencia courted Headley's company more and more.

To fall in love with him was of course absurd; and he had cured himself of his passing fancy for her.

There could be no harm, then, in her making the most of conversation so different from what she heard in the world, and which in her heart of hearts she liked so much better.