here? I should never have known you from the mistress, I''m sure!''
She blushed, and Maud—who was standing in the shadow of the bed-curtain—looked girlish, putting her hand before her mouth. She shivered with laughter, and her dark eyes shone.
''Suppose,'' she said, when Margaret had gone, ''suppose Mr Rivers were to do what Margaret did, and mistake you for me? What would we do, then?''
Again she laughed and shivered. I gazed at the glass, and smiled.
For it was something, wasn''t it, to be taken for a lady?
It''s what my mother would have wanted.
And anyway, I was to get the pick of all her dresses and her jewels, in the end. I was only starting early. I kept the orange gown and, while she went to her uncle, sat turning the hem down and letting out the bodice. I wasn''t about to do myself an injury, for the sake of a sixteen-inch waist.
''Now, do we look handsome?'' said Maud, when I fetched her back. She stood and looked me over, then brushed at her own skirts. ''But here is dust,'' she cried, ''from my uncle''s shelves! Oh! The books, the terrible books!''
She was almost weeping, and wringing her hands.
I took the dust away, and wished I could tell her she was fretting for nothing. She might be dressed in a sack. She might have a face like a coal-heaver''s. So long as there was fifteen thousand in the bank marked Miss Maud Lilly, then Gentleman would want her.