time would have aroused the direct question, "What is the matter,
Elizabeth?" For Miss Hilary did not consider it beneath her dignity
to observe that things might occasionally go wrong with this solitary
young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances
of London lodgings; that many trifles might happen to worry and
perplex her. If the mistress could not set them right, she could at
least give the word of kindly sympathy, as precious to "a poor
servant" as to the Queen on her throne.

This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below
stairs immediately.

The girl was revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical question.
To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not "told Miss Hilary
every thing." Two things had happened, and she could not make up her
mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.

Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and
which, from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher
sensitiveness than, alas! is common among her class, or, indeed, in
any class. This, if an error, was Miss Hilary's doing; it probably
caused Elizabeth a few more miseries, and vexations, and painful
shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed only the
ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary
domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her
life, the Recording Angel would gravely smile.

The first trial had happened at breakfast time. Ascott, descending
earlier than his wont, had asked her. Did any gentleman, short and
dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?