Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

64 RAVENStIOE.
"I am, positively. I got a letter from home to-day. Are you
very sorry, or very glad?"
"I am very sorry, Charles. You are the only friend I have
in the world to whom I can speak as I like. Make me a promise."
" Well?"
" This is the last night we shall be together. Promise that
you won't be rude and sarcastic, as you are sometimes, - almost
always now, to poor me, - but talk kindly, as we used to do."
" Very well," said Charles. " And you promise you won't be
taking such a black view of the state of affairs as you do in general. Do you remember the conversation we had the day the
colt was tried?"
" I remember."
"Well, don't talk like that, you know."
"I won't promise that. The time will come very soon when
we shall have no more pleasant talks together."
"When will that be? "
"When I am gone out for a governess."
"What wages will you get? You will not get so much as
some girls, because you are so pretty and so wilful, and you will
lead them such a deuce of a life."
"Charles, you said -you would n't be rude."
"I choose to be rude. I have been drinking wine, and we are
in the dark, and aunt is asleep and snoring, and I shall say just
what I like."
" I'1 wake her."
"I should like to see you. What shall we talk about?
What an old Roman Lord Saltire is. IHe talked about his son
who was killed to me to-day, just as I should talk about a pointer
dog."
"Then he thought he had been showing some signs of weakness. He always speaks of his son like that when he thinks he
has been betraying some feeling."
" I admire him for it," said Charles. "So yQu are going to be
a governess, eh? "
"I suppose so."
"Why don't you try being barmaid at a public-house? Welter would get you a place directly; he has great influence in
the licensed victualling way. You might come to marry a commercial traveller, for anything you know."
"I would not have believed this," she said, in a fierce, low
voice. " You have turned against me and insult me, because -
Unkind, unjust, ungentlemanlike."
He heard her passionately sobbing in the dark, and the next
moment he had her in his arms, and was covering her face with
kisses.