home from dusk till dinner, she should be dying for a walk. One
could imagine her looking with her grey eyes at dear mamma's horizon
and deciding that papa was certainly not enough to fill it by
himself, deciding at the same time that he was never likely to be
ousted there, only accompanied, in a less important and entirely
innocent degree. It may be surprising that any one should fly from
so broad-minded a step-daughter; but the happy family party lasted a
bare three months. I think Mrs. Harris had a perception--she was
the kind of woman who arrived obscurely at very correct conclusions-
-that she was contributing to her step-daughter's amusement in a
manner which her most benevolent intentions had not contemplated,
and she was not by any means the little person to go on doing that
indefinitely, perhaps increasingly. Besides, it was in the natural
order of things that Dora should marry, and Mrs. Harris doubtless
foresaw a comfortable return for herself in the course of a year or
two, when the usual promising junior in 'the Department' should gild
his own prospects and promote the general well-being by acquiring
its head for a father-in-law. Things always worked out if you gave
them time. How much time you ought to give them was doubtless by
now a pretty constant query with the little lady in her foggy exile;
for two years had already passed and Dora had found no connection
with any young man of the Department more permanent than those
prescribed at dinners and at dances. It is doubtful, indeed, if she
had had the opportunity. There was no absolute means of knowing;
but if offers were made they never transpired, and Mrs. Harris, far
away in England, nourished a certainty that they never were made.
Speaking with her intimate knowledge of the sex she declared that
Dora frightened the men, that her cleverness was of a kind to
paralyze any sentiment of the sort that might be expected. It
depended upon Mrs. Harris's humour whether this was Dora's