confided; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be
betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend.

"Miss Selina isn't my enemy," smiled Elizabeth: "but I'm not overfond
of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex her if I can help
it. Any how, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."

But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest
heart felt a certain diminution of respect for Miss Selina. What
could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom
she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew
nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation
often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care
to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her
own valuation--

"Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a
gentleman?"

He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said
carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the
City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference
to going "out of town."

But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which
she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council
of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative, and did
not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an
uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their
minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it