the fire of anger had burnt itself out in her heart and could not be
rekindled.

With the other it was different. It had been a great shock to her to
discover that the girl she had befriended, and loved as she had never
loved anyone of her own sex before, was so false, so unutterably base.
For some little time she refused to believe it, and a horrible suspicion
of foul play had crossed her mind. But the proofs stared her in the face,
and she remembered that Fan had kept that acquaintance she had formed
with someone out of doors a secret. On returning to the house in the
evening, she was told that shortly after she had gone out for the day a
letter was brought addressed to Fan, and, when questioned, she had
refused to tell Rosie who it was from. At one o'clock Rosie had gone up
with her dinner, and, missing her, had searched for her in all the rooms,
and was then amazed to find that most of the girl's clothes had also
disappeared. But she did not know that anything else had been taken. Miss
Starbrow missed some jewels she had put on her dressing-table, and on a
further search it was discovered that other valuables, and one of her
best travelling bags, were also gone. The astonishment and indignation
displayed by the maid, who exclaimed that she had always considered Fan a
sly little hypocrite, helped perhaps to convince her mistress that the
girl had taken advantage of her absence to make her escape from the
house. Miss Starbrow remembered how confused and guilty she had looked
for two or three days before her flight, and came to the conclusion that
the young friend out of doors, not being able to see Fan, had kept a
watch on the house, and had cunningly arranged it all, and finally sent
or left the letter instructing her where to meet him, also probably
advising her what to take.

But Miss Starbrow had not been entirely bound up in the girl: she had