She thinks, of course, of having you to live with them again; and then she says that on their present income--you will excuse my referring to your parents' reduced circumstances, Miss Bell ?" "Please go on." "Your mother considers that Mr.Bell's means would go further in England than in America.

She asked me to make inquiries; and I must say, judging from the price of umbrellas and woollen goods, I think they would." Elfrida was silent for a moment, looking steadfastly at the possibility Miss Kimpsey had developed.

"What a complication!" she said, half to herself; and then, observing Miss Kimpsey's look of astonishment: "I had no idea of that," she repeated; "I wonder that they have not mentioned it." "Well then!" said Miss Kimpsey, with sudden compunction, "I presume they wanted to surprise you.

And I've gone and spoiled it!" "To surprise me!" Elfrida repeated in her absorption.
"Oh yes; very likely!" Inwardly she saw her garret, the garret that so exhaled her, where she had tasted success and knew a happiness that never altogether failed, vanish into a snug cottage in Hampstead or Surbiton.

She saw the rain of her independence, of her delicious solitariness, of the life that began and ended in her sense of the strange, and the beautiful and the grotesque in a world of curious slaveries, of which it suited her to be an alien spectator, amused and free.