"Any news of your mother, Stella ?" The young lady handed an open letter to her hostess, with a faint smile.
"See for yourself, Adelaide," she answered, with the tender sweetness of tone which made her voice irresistibly charming--"and tell me if there were ever two women so utterly unlike each other as my mother and myself." Lady Loring ran through the letter, as she had run through her own correspondence.

"Never, dearest Stella, have I enjoyed myself as I do in this delightful country house--twenty-seven at dinner every day, without including the neighbors--a little carpet dance every evening--we play billiards, and go into the smoking room--the hounds meet three times a week--all sorts of celebrities among the company, famous beauties included--such dresses! such conversation!--and serious duties, my dear, not neglected--high church and choral service in the town on Sundays--recitations in the evening from Paradise Lost, by an amateur elocutionist--oh, you foolish, headstrong child! why did you make excuses and stay in London, when you might have accompanied me to this earthly Paradise ?--are you really ill ?--my love to Lady Loring--and of course, if you _are_ ill, you must have medical advice--they ask after you so kindly here--the first dinner bell is ringing, before I have half done my letter--what _am_ I to wear ?--why is my daughter not here to advise me," etc., etc., etc.
"There is time to change your mind and advise your mother," Lady Loring remarked with grave irony as she returned the letter.
"Don't even speak of it!" said Stella.

"I really know no life that I should not prefer to the life that my mother is enjoying at this moment.
What should I have done, Adelaide, if you had not offered me a happy refuge in your house?
_My_ 'earthly Paradise' is here, where I am allowed to dream away my time over my drawings and my books, and to resign myself to poor health and low spirits, without being dragged into society, and (worse still) threatened with that 'medical advice' in which, when she isn't threatened with it herself, my poor dear mother believes so implicitly.

I wish you would hire me as your 'companion,' and let me stay here for the rest of my life." Lady Loring's bright face became grave while Stella was speaking.
"My dear," she said kindly, "I know well how you love retirement, and how differently you think and feel from other young women of your age.
And I am far from forgetting what sad circumstances have encouraged the natural bent of your disposition.

But, since you have been staying with me this time, I see something in you which my intimate knowledge of your character fails to explain.