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Rh "Nice? No, not at all. I dislike her particularly. But there she is, and it is no use making a wry face at her. We have been six months in the pension together (she came long after us), and are on distantly civil terms, and I know no more about her than I did the first day I came."

"I don't like associating with people who inspire me with distrust."

"Then you should not come to a pension. You cannot expect, among twelve people gathered from every part of the earth, not to find some shady characters."

"I wish they were all like you," said Elizabeth, smiling. "How nice it would be!"

"Rather monotonous, I expect;" and Miss Baring returned the smile.

The two women had now become as intimate as it is possible to be, when one is perfectly frank and the other reticent of all that concerns the past. Miss Hatty, indeed, had nothing to conceal, nor any love-confidences to make. She had reached the age of twenty-nine without a proposal, without a romance. Her troubles had all been of the most prosaic kind—loss of money, lawsuits, and the long lingering illness of an exacting parent. Her pride and her happiness were centred in her brother. It was the only point on which Elizabeth thought her new friend decidedly weak. He was, no doubt, a man of strength and originality of mind; and he was a clever painter. So much Elizabeth was willing to concede. She saw very little of him, except in the studio; but there she had got to value his opinion, in a way, and to listen to his remarks with interest. He was unlike any one she