“What now?” I asked; for she had suspended the operation of arranging her attire, and was gazing at me.

“It seems so odd,” she replied, with her usual half-honest, half-insolent unreserve, “that you and I should now be so much on a level, visiting in the same sphere; having the same connections.”

“Why, yes,” said I; “I had not much respect for the connections you chiefly frequented awhile ago: Mrs. Cholmondeley and Co. would never have suited me at all.”

“Who are you, Miss Snowe?” she inquired, in a tone of such undisguised and unsophisticated curiosity, as made me laugh in my turn.