"I suppose," she said, "that it is not always the most favorable specimens of the English who visit Paris. We used to see such droll caricatures. I like a good caricature above all things—do you, Miss Hastings?"
"When it is good, and pains no one," was the sensible reply.
The girl turned away with a little impatient sigh.
"Your ideas are all colorless," she said, sharply. "In England it seems to me that everybody is alike. You have no individuality, no character."
"If character means, in your sense of the word, ill-nature, so much the better," rejoined Miss Hastings. "All good-hearted people strive to save each other from pain."
"I wonder," said Pauline, thoughtfully, "if I shall like Captain Langton! We have been living here quietly enough; but I feel as though some great change were coming. You have no doubt experienced that peculiar sensation which comes over one just before a heavy thunder-storm? I have that strange, half-nervous, half-restless sensation now."
"You will try to be amiable, Pauline," put in the governess, quietly. "You see that Sir Oswald evidently thinks a great deal of this young friend of his. You will try not to shock your uncle in any way—not to violate those little conventionalities that he respects so much."
"I will do my best; but I must be myself—always myself. I cannot assume a false character."
"Then let it be your better self," said the governess, gently; and for one minute Pauline Darrell was touched.
"That sweet creature, Lady Hampton's niece, will be here next week," she remarked, after a short pause. "What changes will be brought into our lives, I wonder?"