To be sure I have lost one," she sighed; "and the best among them all." When her grandfather left her, Iris placed candles on the writing-table, but did not light them, though it was already pretty dark.

She had half an hour to wait; and she wanted to think, and candles are not necessary for meditation.

She sat at the open window and suffered her thoughts to ramble where they pleased.

This is a restful thing to do, especially if your windows look upon a tolerably busy but not noisy London road.

For then, it is almost as good as sitting beside a swiftly-running stream; the movement of the people below is like the unceasing flow of the current; the sound of the footsteps is like the whisper of the water along the bank; the echo of the half heard talk strikes your ear like the mysterious voices wafted to the banks from the boats as they go by; and the lights of the shops and the street presently become spectral and unreal like lights seen upon the river in the evening.
Iris had a good many pupils--six, in fact, as she had boasted; why, then, was she so strangely disturbed on account of one?
An old tutor by correspondence may be, and very likely is, indifferent about his pupils, because he has had so many; but Iris was a young tutor, and had as yet known few.