was very nice and not too naughty to be cuddled and kissed by a handsome
gentleman, with a big moustache, fine eyes, and baritone voice! but she
was not prepared to go further than that--just yet; only pretending that
by-and-by--perhaps; firing his heart with languishing sighs, the soft
unspoken "Ask me no more, for at a touch I yield"; and then she would
slip from his arms, and run away to put by the little present of sham
jewellery, and think it all very fine fun. They were amusing themselves.
His serious love-making was for her mistress. She--Rosie--had a future--a
great splendid future, to which she must advance by slow degrees, step by
step, sometimes even losing ground a little--and much had been lost since
that starved white kitten had come into the house.

When Miss Starbrow, in a fit of anger, had dismissed her maid some months
before, and then had accepted some little personal assistance in dressing
for the play, and at other times, from her housemaid, Rosie at once
imagined that she was winning her way to her mistress's heart, and her
silly dream was that she would eventually get promoted to the vacant and
desirable place of lady's-maid. The cast-off dresses, boots, pieces of
finery, and many other things which would be her perquisites would be a
little fortune to her, and greatly excited her cupidity. But there were
other more important considerations: she would occupy a much higher
position in the social scale, and dress well, her hands and skin would
grow soft and white, and her appearance and conversation would be that of
a lady; for to be a lady's-maid is, of course, the nearest thing to being
a lady. And with her native charms, ambitious intriguing brain, what
might she not rise to in time? and she had been so careful, and, she
imagined, had succeeded so well in ingratiating herself with her
mistress; and by means of a few well-constructed lies had so filled Miss
Starbrow with disgust at the ordinary lady's-maid taken ready-made out of
a registry-office, that she had begun to look on the place almost as her