For, with those two credulous ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she so ardently desired they might have, taken place .-- A pathetic form of lying this, though far from uncommon to feminine and--more especially--spinster practice and habit! Still Theresa was not so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again afflicted her.

One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid Damaris good-bye.

Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure aroused latent alarms.

She began to excuse her action in leaving her charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added, red and agitated in the process.

Her thick, short little fingers worked nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella.