While Lady Lancaster was finishing her toilet upstairs, Leonora finished her fugue in the drawing-room. Then she played a little morceau from Bach. Then she began to sing. The dowager, coming along the corridor outside with stealthy, cat-like steps, was amazed to catch the passionate words of a little gem from "Iolanthe," sung in a voice as sweet and clear and well trained as many a professional could boast.

"An opera song! Upon my word! What sort of a girl is it, anyhow?" ejaculated the dowager, in astonishment; and in spite of her haste and anger, she could not help pausing to hear the words of the tender love song:

"Upon my word, that must be a remarkable child," Lady Lancaster said to herself; and, like Elise, she peeped around the door to get a secret view of the daring transgressor.

After she had looked she stepped back a pace in amazement. She was more astonished than she had ever been in her life.

The child she had come to see was nowhere. She had come down the stairs with a distinct intention of "boxing the little brat's ears for her temerity." She stared in amazement at what she saw.

And yet it was not a wonderful sight, but only a very pleasing one—unless my lady had been hard to please—only a graceful, girlish figure in deep black, with a line of white at the slender throat, where the narrow linen collar was fastened with a neat bar of jet—only a fair young face, with its profile turned toward the door, and two small white hands guiltless of rings or other adorning, save their own dimpled beauty, straying over the keys with a loving touch, as if all her soul was in her song.

Lady Lancaster caught her breath with a gasp as if someone had thrown cold water over her. She turned to the maid; exclaiming, in a shrill whisper:

"Elise, that is not West's American niece. You are trying to deceive me!"

"No, my lady, I am not. It is Miss West. Is she not a pretty girl?"

"But I thought," said my lady, ignoring the question, "that West's niece was a child. I am sure she told me so."

"I do not know what she told you; but this is certainly Leonora West," reiterated the maid; and then her mistress stepped over the threshold into the room, the long train of her stiff brocade rustling behind her as she walked with an air of withering majesty upon her wrinkled face.

Leonora, hearing the ominous sound, glanced around with a startled air, her hands fell from the keys, and she sprung to her feet, and stood waiting the lady's approach—not humbly, not nervously, but with that calm dignity and self-possession that seemed characteristic of her, and that seemed to belong peculiarly to her as fragrance belongs to a flower.

Lady Lancaster was not propitiated by that peculiar air. To her angry eyes it savored of defiance.

She walked on across the thick, soft pile of the velvet carpet until she was directly in front of the waiting girl, and then Leonora lifted her eyes with an air of gentle curiosity, and dropped her a graceful courtesy.

"Impertinent! I have a great mind to slap her, anyhow!" the old lady said, irately, to herself; but she kept down her spleen with a great effort of will, and said, with ironical politeness:

"You are Leonora West, the housekeeper's niece, I presume?"

"Yes, madame, that is my name," Leonora answered, with another graceful bow. "And you are—Mrs. Lancaster!"

"Lady Lancaster, if you please," flashed the dowager, haughtily.

"Ah?" smoothly. "Lady Lancaster, I beg your pardon. You see we have no titles in America. A plain Mrs. is a title of honor in itself, and when one comes to England one is apt to forget the requirements of rank."

A graceful, simple explanation enough; but Elise, who kept close beside her mistress, saw a roguish gleam in the blue-gray eyes shaded by the drooping black lashes.

"She is laughing in her sleeve at my lady," thought the astute maid; but she did not resent the girlish impertinence in her mind. Lady Lancaster snubbed her handmaid so often that Elise rather enjoyed seeing her snubbed in her turn.

Lady Lancaster dimly felt something in the suave, silver-sweet tones that vaguely angered her.

"You are very excusable, Miss West," she said, tartly and insultingly. "One has to pardon much to American impudence and ignorance."

Leonora looked at her with the full gaze of her clear orbs.

"I hardly think I understand you, Lady Lancaster," said she, calmly.

"I fail to make my meaning clear, do I?" cried the dowager, furious. "Tell me this, then. How dared you come into my drawing-room and play on the piano?"

"Your drawing-room?" the girl lifted her eyes in gentle, courteous inquiry.

"Lord Lancaster's, then; and just as good as mine, since he is too poor to live at home. But that is no concern of yours. I repeat—how dared you play on the piano?"

Leonora looked very innocent and wondering and candid.

"I assure you I have not injured the piano one bit," she said. "It is a very nice one; but I understand how to use it, and my touch is very soft."

"Who cares about your touch? I was not talking about that. No one cares for that," contemptuously. "I referred to your impertinence in coming out of your proper place in the housekeeper's rooms and entering this drawing-room."

"Oh!" intelligently.

"Well, what do you mean by 'oh'?" inquired the angry dowager.

"I mean that there was no harm done by my entrance here. I have not hurt anything. I was very curious to know what great people's houses looked like, so I persuaded my aunt to let me come and see; but I really can not understand what terrible offense I have committed against your ladyship," said Leonora, with her gentle, candid air.

"You are poor and lowly born, and your place is in the rooms of the servants, and—and—I thought you were a child," sputtered Lady Lancaster, unable to fence with the polished tools of her fair opponent, and continuing, incoherently: "What did you mean, anyway, by—by—"

"By being a tall, grown-up girl instead of a child?" interposed Leonora, allowing a soft little smile to flicker over her rosy lips. "Oh, Lady Lancaster, pray be reasonable! Could I help it, really? Can one turn back the hands of Time? If that were possible, surely you would have availed yourself long ago of that wondrous art;" and with a graceful little bow, Leonora walked deliberately out of the room, having fired this Parthian shot of delicate feminine spite into the camp of the astounded enemy.

Lady Lancaster was purple with rage and dismay. She had sallied upon the field ready to drive the intruder from her grounds, and she, Lady Lancaster, the great rich lady, had been vanquished by the sharp little tongue of a low-born girl who had so innocent and candid an air that she did not at this moment quite realize that the girl herself knew the enormity of the offense she had committed.

Elise, full of silent, demure laughter, waited for her mistress to speak.

It was several minutes before she rallied from her fit of rage enough to speak clearly. When she did, she said, sharply:

"Put me into a chair, Elise, and bring Mrs. West to me."

"Hadn't I better take you back to your room first? Perhaps some one may come in here. And you have pushed your wig awry, and the powder is all off your face, my lady," said Elise, demurely; and her mistress groaned:

"Take me back to my room, then, and tell West to come at once—at once, do you hear?"

And when she had regained the privacy of her own room she sunk down exhausted upon her bed to await the housekeeper's arrival.

Leonora had already gone to Mrs. West's room and related her adventure.

"And oh! Aunt West, she was so proud and scornful and overbearing that I was vexed at her; and I'm afraid that I was just a little bit saucy to her. What will she do, do you think? Will she send me away from Lancaster Park?"

"She will have to send me too if she does!" cried Mrs. West.

"Oh, Aunt West, would you really go? Would you give up the home of sixteen years for my sake?" cried the girl.

"Yes, dear, I would go. You have no one but me, and I mean to do the best I can for your happiness. If Lady Lancaster is unreasonable about this matter, I shall leave her," said Mrs. West, decidedly.

"But, oh, aunt, you will be sorry that I came to you—sorry that poor papa left me on your hands," anxiously.

"I shall regret nothing, dear, if I can only do my duty by you," was the reassuring reply that brought a look of relief into Leonora's beautiful face.

Then Elise came with Lady Lancaster's message. She looked curiously at the calm, unruffled face of Leonora.

"Oh, Miss West, you have seriously offended my mistress!" she exclaimed.

"Have I?" Leonora answered, demurely; and Elise knew by the gleam under the girl's long lashes that she did not care. She delivered her message and departed.

"I do not know what to make of that Miss West; but she is decidedly too proud and too pretty for her position," Elise said to herself, when she was going slowly back upstairs to her mistress. "I'm afraid she will cause Mrs. West to lose her place."

Mrs. West went upstairs to the great lady, and Leonora waited in the little sitting-room for her return, which occurred in about fifteen minutes. The housekeeper was somewhat red in the face, and her lips were curved rather sternly.

"Well, aunt, have you promised to send me away?" the young girl asked, demurely.

"She would have liked to have me do so," said Mrs. West, indignantly. "She was very arrogant and presuming. She seems to be quite angry because poor Dick's daughter is as pretty and accomplished as the young ladies in a higher rank of life."

Leonora smiled, and her aunt continued:

"I gave warning that I would leave her in a month. If it were not for Lord Lancaster, I would go to-day; but he has always been so kind that I shall stay a few weeks longer for his sake. Can you endure it that much longer, my child?"

"Oh, yes," said Leonora, "I will try to be very good that long. And, Aunt West, when we leave here we are going back to New York. You need not shake your head so solemnly. I am a willful child, and I mean to have my own way."