Lettice, whose ears were as sharp as her eyes, could not help hearing every word. "This is the most hatefully ugly place I've ever seen. Of course one expects advertisements to lie, but there is such a thing as overdoing it." 

When Dorothea was annoyed, she let it be known. Louisa, faithful soul, bowed her head before the storm; but she paid about as much attention as to the rages of a child. 

"Oh, Miss Dot dear, I wish you'd leave this dreadful heathen country and come back to England!" 

"I'm coming back to England when I've done what I want, and not before." There was a pleasing vigor and directness in Dorothea's statements. "I'm sorry for you, Louisa, but after all you'll be able to get a cup of real English tea at the Bellevue--all the advertisements said so!" 

"'Tisn't tea I'm thinking of, Miss Dot, but this dreadful wicked idea of yours. Deceiving your dear kind uncle and all--" 

"It's no business of Uncle Jack's what I do, and if I don't tell him it's only because I don't want him to be bothered." Louisa sighed and shook her head. "I won't be moaned at," Dorothea declared, with an inimical flash. "No, and I won't be prayed at either! I've told you, you can go home if you like; but if you stay, you'll just have to resign yourself, because I am going through with it--I should despise myself for ever and ever if I didn't! There: is that plain?" 

"Oh, Miss Dot, you have shook your hat so crooked!" was Louisa's earnest reply. Dorothea laughed, as she submitted to have it set straight. 

"I rather hate you sometimes, Louisa darling, you make me feel such a brute," she said, "but I'm going on, all the same. Dear me, is this place an example of the unsurpassed view, I wonder? It'll add a fresh joy to Rochehaut if there's an outbreak of typhoid!" 

They were passing through the village which in the distance had looked so trim. Set well back from the road on either side was a row of white houses; before each house, a midden, foursquare; before the middens, a gutter, running auburn; between the gutters, the main street, down which the omnibus had to pass. Dorothea, her face buried in her handkerchief, was rummaging her bag impatiently for a bottle of lavender salts, when something made her glance at her fellow-traveler. Lettice was no longer gray, she was green, and trying weakly to unfasten her veil. Suddenly her surprised and unyielding waist was clasped by a peremptory arm, and 

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