In spite of the liking that both Edward and Nancy had come to show for her society, Margaret often felt very lonely at The Cedars, far more lonely than she would have believed it would be possible for her to be in a big household of lively boys and girls. Edward was a boy of many occupations and had much to do besides playing croquet with her, and Hilary often claimed Nancy's companionship even when she did not particularly wish for it just for the spiteful pleasure of depriving Margaret of it. So that Margaret was thrown very much on her own resources—so much so, indeed, that she sometimes wondered with a touch of wistfulness if she was any gayer in the midst of this merry, chattering crowd of young people than she had been in the silent old house that she had left so gladly one short month ago.

But, at any rate, her health had improved in a marked degree since she had come to Seabourne. That was, no doubt, due to the fact that, encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers, Margaret spent much of her time out of doors. And as she had discovered that the afternoon was the best time to visit Eleanor, Margaret generally started for Windy Gap directly after lunch, and the pure, breezy air of the downs acted as an excellent tonic.

And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first momentous interview.

Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had found out many short cuts across the grass, by means of which she avoided the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at all to complain of in that respect.

"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me, but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless, silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."

Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that passage from Mr. Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a certain amount of truth.

"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh. "Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three weeks."

But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the sake of them.

"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me and assure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs. Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and not a dream."

"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one day.

"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends. So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret! But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."

"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor had admitted as much.

"Of course, I always knew I was doing wrong," Eleanor said, "but I tried to hush my conscience up. I can't hush it up any longer, but," she added with much vigour, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention to what it says, for I am not."

Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.

"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the turning-point of my life.

"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you are giving me."

"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your gift is thrown away—wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."

"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.

"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.

"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.

"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be thought of yet, and so, hey presto!" and her brow cleared as if by magic, "I refuse to think of it."

The end of one of Eleanor's rapid speeches, in the course of which she could pass with astounding swiftness from one mood to another, always left Margaret with a slight feeling of bewilderment. In the present instance she had been greatly moved by Eleanor's impulsive appeal to her not to think badly of her, and had just been about to assure her that indeed she had never judged her conduct hardly when Eleanor had gone on to justify herself, to speak of her future plans, and had wound up as suddenly by refusing to consider the future at all.

No wonder, then, that Margaret, with whom speech was never very ready, felt at a loss what to answer when Eleanor, pausing in her restless march to and fro, asked her abruptly what she was thinking of.

"You listen, listen, listen always so silently, my little pale Margaret," she said, "and you look so grave and so wise, but never a word do you say."

"It is because you talk so fast and tell me so much that I have not time to answer one thing before you go on to another," said Margaret.

"Well, you never answered my question just now. Tell me, do you despise me for my selfishness?"

"No," said Margaret, with sudden earnestness, "I like you too much."

"Really and truly, Margaret?"

"Really and truly," Margaret made reply. "You know I liked you from the first moment I saw you in the waiting-room. You were the first girl of my own age that I had ever spoken to, and I shall never forget how I stood by the window watching you as you did your exercise, and wished you were my friend."

"And a pretty friend I have been to you," interrupted Eleanor. "I stole your name and everything that belongs to you, and, by the way, that reminds me——"

"It was my own wish," said Margaret, interrupting in her turn. "Never forget that, Eleanor. It was to please myself that I began it."

"But to please me that you went on with it," said Eleanor. "'Although he promise to his cost he makes his promise good,'" she quoted.

"Yes, perhaps," Margaret admitted; "but now, Eleanor, I am glad to do it for you, I am indeed. It gives me great pleasure to have a friend, and to be able to serve her."

An odd, shamed look came for a moment into Eleanor's eyes. "I wish you had found a better friend for your first one than me," she said; "or rather," she added ruefully, "I wish that I did wish it, but I don't. So it's no good pretending. You shall hear me sing one day, Margaret, and then you will know why it is that my conscience never gets a fair chance with me. If it talks too loud I just sing it down. But look here, Margaret, to talk of something else besides my voice for a minute, to which fascinating subject we always seem to go back, when I said just now that I had stolen your name and everything that belonged to you it reminded me that I had also come in for something for which I never bargained, and that was for an aunt. Did you know that you had an aunt living not four miles from here."

Margaret, much startled, answered that she did not know that she possessed an aunt at all.

"You do indeed, then," Eleanor said. "Wrexley Park is the name of her house; she was your father's sister, and she is now Lady Strangways."

Margaret's grave hazel eyes were opened to their fullest width.

"Are you sure that you are not making a mistake, Eleanor," she said, "or that you are not joking? I never heard before that I had an aunt or any relations at all except a grandfather."

"No, I am not making a mistake, nor am I joking," returned Eleanor. "Truth to say, it is no joking matter, for Lady Strangways has expressed a wish to see her niece, and is coming here this very afternoon for that purpose. Can you not tell me something about her?"

"How can I tell you anything when I never heard that she was my aunt until this very minute?"

"She was your father's youngest sister, however," continued Eleanor; "but she married very young, and has been out of England for years and years. Her husband was in the Indian Civil, and they were out in India most of their time, and when he was on leave he preferred to travel in other countries instead of coming home, or when he did come he paid such flying visits, that it gave Lady Strangways no time to look up unknown nieces, at any rate. But Sir Richard retired a couple of years ago, and bought Wrexley Park."

"Yes, but surely if she was really my aunt, my grandfather would have told me about her," said Margaret, "and wished me to know her."

"Not he," said Eleanor. "Mrs. Murray was talking about your grandfather last night. Oh, of course she did not say anything that was not fitting for a dutiful granddaughter to hear, but she did give me to understand that your grandfather was a very prejudiced man, and that he had purposely kept you away from all your father's relations. On your mother's side I understand you have none. And for the matter of that all your father's relations except this sister are dead. His two brothers died unmarried, and his elder sister, who is dead too, left no children. And there is only this Lady Strangways left. And she has been out of England so long, that she knew nothing of your grandfather's desire to keep you apart from your father's family."

"But how did she learn that you, that I, well, that her niece was staying with Mrs. Murray?"

"Through Mrs. Murray herself, of course, goosey gander. Mrs. Murray always knew she was your aunt, and welcomes this chance of bringing you together. For my part I wish she didn't. I have caught a glimpse of Lady Strangways in church, and she is rather an awe-inspiring person, and I do not at all relish the idea of being brought face to face with her some day, and keeping up our little deception."

"Miss Margaret! Miss Margaret!" called a voice at that moment. "Where are you, if you please, Miss?"

Eleanor started to her feet, and putting her finger to her lips as a sign to Margaret to keep silence, ran hastily out of the arbour, and along the path to the foot of the steps.

"Here I am, Mary," she said. "What is it?"

"If you please, Miss," said the voice, as the person to whom it belonged halted on the lawn at the top of the steps, "Lady Strangways has called, and the mistress says she will be down in a minute, and will you go into the drawing-room at once?"

"Very well, Mary, I will come in a moment."

The maid retraced her steps across the lawn, and Eleanor hastened back to the arbour.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered, with a whimsical smile. "Lady Strangways has come. Oh, how I wish I could send you in to see her instead of me! However, I am afraid that that is not possible, though I think it isn't fair that I should have to face this formidable aunt instead of you. I have an idea, too, that she won't like me. She looks too great and stately a lady, if you understand, to take a fancy to a flippant person like me, and she would have liked you. But, there, it's no good grumbling at my ill-luck; I must go and face her, I suppose, and make the best of an awkward situation."

"I should have thought that you would have enjoyed it," Margaret said, rather wondering at Eleanor's mood.

"I dislike taking any risks that put my singing lessons in jeopardy," said Eleanor vehemently; "besides, candidly, I feel that I shall not show to advantage in the forthcoming interview. It is not often that I feel shy, but I do feel shy of this aunt of yours. Well, good-bye! Sit quietly here; you will be quite safe, and I will come back as soon as I can and tell you all about your aunt."

With a hasty nod of farewell, Eleanor sped along the path and mounted the steps leading to the lawn. And hardly had she reached it than Margaret was startled to hear her being addressed, and the first words she overheard told Margaret that Lady Strangways, instead of waiting for her niece to come to her in the drawing-room, had followed the maid out to the garden. Had Eleanor delayed only a moment or two longer, Lady Strangways would probably have come upon them both in the arbour.

"You were so long in coming to me, my dear Margaret," said the unseen voice, in clear, well-bred tones that struck pleasantly on the real Margaret's ear, "that I decided to come into the garden and look for you. Let me introduce myself. I am your Aunt Helen, your father's sister. I am sorry to have been a stranger to you until now, but that is not my fault. I have only just returned to England after an absence of many years, and strange though it may appear to you, I really did not know of your existence until the other day. My brother was many years older than I, and I never saw him after I was a child. In fact I was to all intents and purposes a stranger to all my brothers and sisters. They were all grown up while I was in the schoolroom still, and were very little at home. But I knew that my brother John had married a distant cousin of the same surname as our own, whose Christian name was Margaret, and that was all I ever heard of him; and when I heard that a girl, called Margaret Anstruther, was staying here, I felt sure that you must be my niece. And, you see, I was right. I am very pleased to see you, my dear, and to have an opportunity of coming to know you at last."

The pleasant, clear voice, the graciously uttered words, held Margaret—the real Margaret, that is—spellbound; then, jumping to her feet, she climbed on to the rockery that supported the bank above her and peeped through the tall-growing herbaceous plants that grew thickly on the border at the edge of the lawn. It never occurred to her that she was eaves-dropping, and even if it had, she would not have felt greatly ashamed. After all, this was her aunt, and she believed she was speaking to her niece. Surely, therefore, her niece had every right to listen to what she was saying.

Lady Strangways stood on the grass just at the top of the flight of steps, up which Eleanor had had barely time to scramble before she got there, and Margaret, parting the leaves and stems of the intervening plants, was able to take a good long look at her unknown aunt.

Lady Strangways was tall, and carried her head and shoulders in a stately way that gave her grace and distinction. She had a broad, low brow, and a mouth and chin which showed decision of character as well as sweetness of disposition. But it was her eyes that were her chief charm. They were beautiful hazel eyes, and as Margaret looked at them a feeling came over her that they were oddly familiar to her, and yet she had never seen Lady Strangways before. Altogether, it was a face that attracted attention, and charmed by its sunny-tempered grace and kindness.

Margaret continued to gaze at this aunt in a fascinated way, and a curious little feeling of pride thrilled in her as she reflected that she was the niece of any one who not only looked so sweet and so gracious as Lady Strangways, but who was so evidently a woman of fashion and of the great world.

Margaret remembered the flutter of excitement which Mrs. Danvers had shown when, on returning from a tea-party one day, she had found Lady Strangways' card on the table, and the regret she had expressed that she had been out. What, then, would the Danvers say, Margaret wondered, when they heard that she was a niece of Lady Strangways?

For a moment Margaret quite enjoyed the thought of their prospective astonishment, until with a little pang she remembered that it was Eleanor who was being acknowledged at this moment by this charming-looking aunt, not she, and a slow, painful jealousy stirred in Margaret at the thought.

Not that Eleanor was usurping the relationship at all willingly. Margaret could see that her unfortunate accomplice, who was generally so ready of tongue, and so self-confident, was very far from feeling at her ease in the presence of Lady Strangways, and was comporting herself like an awkward, embarrassed schoolgirl. For a time she seemed absolutely incapable of answering anything that was said to her, except in monosyllables, and though Lady Strangways did her best to set her at her ease, her efforts met with poor success.

"My dear child," she said at last, as she drew Eleanor's reluctant hand within her arm, and tried to look into the girl's averted face, "you must not be so shy with me! Remember that I am your aunt, and that as you have no mother, and I no daughter, we might be very much to one another in the future."

These graciously uttered words, accompanied as they were by a charming smile, and a gentle drawing of the girl to her side, as if she would have kissed her, caused Margaret's jealousy to increase.

But the proffered caress, far from waking in Eleanor a responsive feeling, caused her to shrink further away from Lady Strangways' side.

"You are very kind, Lady Strangways," she said uneasily, "but—but we are only strangers as yet, aren't we?"

Had Eleanor not been at her wits' end to know what to say, she would scarcely have uttered such an extremely gauche remark as that, but as a matter of fact she had not the very remotest idea what she was saying.

Lady Strangways drew back and looked gravely for a moment at Eleanor's averted face. She was obviously unused to have her overtures rejected, and she was wondering if Eleanor's ungracious answer and constrained manner was dictated by shyness only.

"Yes, at present we are strangers," she made reply, rather coldly; "but I wish to know my niece, and you mustn't call me Lady Strangways, you must call me Aunt Helen."

"Oh, I would really rather not," Eleanor said, and this time her distress and embarrassment were so marked that Lady Strangways, though she still looked exceedingly puzzled, allowed her manner to soften.

"Never mind, then," she said, "I won't ask you to do anything you would rather not. I hear you are having singing lessons from Madame Martelli. Will you sing to me?"

"Oh, yes," Eleanor responded with alacrity. She started across the lawn towards the house at a great rate, her relief at being released from the immediate necessity of further conversation with her new-found relative so plainly expressed in the way in which she was careful to keep a couple of yards ahead of her, that Lady Strangways raised her eyebrows in mute protest at her niece's extraordinarily farouche behaviour.

When they reached the little drawing-room, gay with flowers, she sank gracefully into a chair, and resigned herself to a rather trying five minutes. Eleanor searched among her music, opened the piano, and sat down.

"What are you going to sing to me, dear," Lady Strangways asked in a tone of polite interest.

"Ah fors È lui."

Lady Strangways did her very best to repress a shudder. Not a month had elapsed since she had seen Tetrazzini in "La Traviata," and it was rather terrible to think of hearing her poor niece attempt any song out of that opera.

"Or, if you would prefer it," said Eleanor, with a demureness that was contradicted by the mischievous gleam in her red-brown eyes, "I will sing you the Jewel Song out of 'Faust.'"

"That would be worse," Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; sing me what you like."

Eleanor twisted round on her stool and surveyed her aunt, or rather, the lady who thought she was her aunt, with an amused smile. All of a sudden a complete change had come over her demeanour. The neighbourhood of a piano always seemed to give Eleanor confidence, and now her shyness and awkwardness fell away from her, and she twisted round on the music stool and surveyed her quondam aunt with an amused smile. It pleased her to delay her inevitable triumph for a moment or two, even to pose as a vain, silly schoolgirl.

"I really sing very well," she said; "though I can see that you do not believe it."

"Let me hear you," said Lady Strangways encouragingly, "and then I can tell you what I think. Do not be too shy to sing your best."

"I am never shy when I am singing," said Eleanor. "Why should I be? I am proud of my beautiful voice. No young, coming-on singer has a voice like it; in a few years, with proper training and hard work, I shall rank with Melba and Tetrazzini."

Lady Strangways gave a little gasp.

"You have not a very modest opinion of yourself, my dear," she could not refrain from saying, as she eyed her niece rather curiously.

"Of myself I have a very modest opinion," returned Eleanor. "I know my own faults, and some of them are pretty bad, as you will say one day, perhaps, but there is no fault to be found with my voice—none—except that, of course, it is not trained yet; but it would be too absurd for me to be mock modest about it as though its beauty were something that I could plume myself on. It is a gift—a glorious gift—and I love it and worship it."

Eleanor made a striking picture as she sat there with her hands folded in her lap, while the sun, pouring in from a small west window set high in the wall, turned her red-brown hair to gold. Lady Strangways surveyed her with an ever deepening amazement. This niece, with her brilliant colouring and her excited, vivacious manner, was very unlike the girl she had imagined her niece would be; very different, also, to the shy, awkward girl she had been a few minutes back.

As Eleanor gave utterance to her impassioned speech, the slightly mocking smile with which she had been eyeing Lady Strangways died away, and was replaced by an earnest, rapt look, which showed to her listener how seriously she herself took every word she was saying.

Then Eleanor turned to the piano and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Lady Strangways nodded approvingly, as she listened to the firm, good touch. The girl was really quite musical. She perceived that already, and if her choice of a song had been less wildly ambitious, or better still, if she would go on playing and not sing at all, why——

But at that moment Eleanor began to sing, and the look of kindly approval which Lady Strangways' face had worn was swept away as by some magic touch, for Signor Vanucci and Madame Martelli had made no mistake. Eleanor had a great, a glorious voice; clear and sweet as a golden bell; full, and deep, and rich; it was a voice which would one day add the name of its owner to the list of the world's great singers.

Lady Strangways recognised the fact instantly. Though she neither played nor sang, she was a capable judge of music, and she knew that this girl's voice would carry her to the front rank. Of course, her rendering of the song was far from perfect, her phrasing was often inaccurate, her voice not under control, and its training unfinished; but what mattered those details? Lady Strangways knew she was listening to a magnificent voice, and sheer delight and amazement held her spellbound for some moments after the last full, throbbing notes had died away into silence. Then she rose impulsively and crossed to the piano.

"My dear," she said simply, "God has given you a great gift."

Eleanor nodded in a grave, almost abstracted manner.

"Yes," she said, in low, dreamy tones, "He has." Then suddenly her tranquil mood changed, and she appeared to be swept by a sudden gust of passion. "And sometimes," she added bitterly, "I wonder why, if it is only by resorting to trickery and roguery that I can make use of it."

"My dear child, what do you mean?" Lady Strangways said in astonishment, not unmixed with displeasure. "Those are strange words for a niece of mine to apply to her own conduct."

"Are they?" said Eleanor; "but tell me, wouldn't you stoop to any trickery—any meanness, if you had a voice like mine, and saw no chance of getting it trained?"

Her face had grown very pale, but her eyes blazed into Lady Strangways as she stood confronting her. The latter, seeing that the girl was literally shaking with emotion, and not having the clue to her thoughts, supposed that she was merely overwrought by her singing.

"But why should it be necessary to resort to meanness of any sort to have your voice trained?" she said, speaking purposely in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. "Your grandfather appears perfectly willing to have you taught, otherwise he would scarcely have put you under such a teacher as Madame Martelli."

"You don't understand," Eleanor muttered, turning away her head, unable to meet Lady Strangways' serene, beautiful eyes. Somehow they made her feel terribly ashamed of the part she was playing.

"No; but I am trying to," said Lady Strangways in a perplexed tone, "and I cannot imagine why you should be under any apprehension that your grandfather will try and put obstacles in the way of your getting all the training your beautiful voice deserves. Is he not proud of it?"

Eleanor shook her head. "He doesn't know anything about it," she said; "he just thinks his niece has a nice little drawing-room voice."

Lady Strangways drew a deep breath. "Oh, I understand now," she said. "You are afraid that he will not let you train for the stage, that he will be prejudiced against it. But, my dear Margaret, that would be an unheard-of pity; such a voice as yours must not be wasted—it would be a sin. I shall use my influence with your grandfather, if he is really against your being properly trained, and get him to consent to your having the very best teaching that can be given to you. And if it is a question of money——"

But there Lady Strangways paused and looked a little doubtful. Truth to say, she did not think that money had anything to do with the question; she remembered vaguely to have heard that her brother had married an heiress; if so, his only daughter would surely not lack means to train for any career she fancied.

"No, no!" Eleanor exclaimed almost violently, "I could not take money from you—I could not. It will be far better if we never see each other again." And brushing suddenly past the astounded Lady Strangways, Eleanor dashed out of the window and disappeared in a flash round the corner of the house.

"Well, of all the most astonishing girls I ever met, my niece, Margaret Anstruther, is certainly the most astonishing," was Lady Strangways' inward comment as she gazed after Eleanor's flying figure. "She seems to pass through a greater variety of moods in a shorter space of time than any one I ever met. She must be a very uncomfortable person to live with. But what a magnificent voice! What a tremendous gift she has been endowed with!"

But at that point Lady Strangways' musings were interrupted by the belated appearance of her hostess, who came limping with the aid of a stick, and with a slow and painful step into the room.

For, as she had said in her letter to Mr. Anstruther, Mrs. Murray was a martyr to an acute form of rheumatism, and though few people beyond her old and attached servants knew it, she was seldom long out of pain. And, partly on account of her rheumatism, and partly because she was so very deaf, she shunned society, and was rarely to be met with in any one else's house, although she gladly welcomed any one who, as she put it, was kind enough to come and see her. But, on the other hand, she visited a great deal among the poor, not only in her own village, but in the villages for many miles around Windy Gap, and the sight of her fat, sturdy, grey ponies drawing up outside the doors of their cottages was one that never failed to give pleasure to their inmates. She and Lady Strangways had met over a year ago at the bedside of a poor girl who was suffering from an incurable malady, and whose parents rented a cottage on the Wrexley estate. Lady Strangways, who was conscientiously trying, in the intervals of a very full and busy life, to know all her husband's tenants, and who, wherever she went, heard Mrs. Murray's praises sounded, asked at once to be allowed to call on her. Mrs. Murray answered courteously that it would give her great pleasure to know Lady Strangways, but pleaded her infirmities as an excuse for paying any visits herself. In spite of her deafness and her lameness, Mrs. Murray was the soul of cheerfulness. Though she was cut off from much intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was never at a loss for occupation, and had so many resources within herself that she rarely had a dull moment. For one thing she was an omnivorous reader, and just as Mrs. Danvers never sat down without a piece of knitting in her hand, so Mrs. Murray never sat down without a book.

"Needlework," she had said once when a friend had tried to induce her to ply a needle of some sort, "is all very well for those who can hear. They can work and listen at the same time, but if I took to knitting, or crochet, or embroidery, I should be shut up with my own thoughts instead of getting out of myself and away into some of the best company in the world. My thinking," she added with a wry little smile, "is done at night, when my rheumatism will not permit me to sleep."

"So you have seen Margaret," she said, in the curious low voice habitual to her, which made it almost as difficult for other people to hear what she said as she found it to hear what they said. "I left you with her so long on purpose that you might make her acquaintance. Is she not a charming girl?"

Now as "charming" was certainly not the word which her short experience of Eleanor's behaviour that afternoon would have led her to apply to her niece, Lady Strangways hesitated.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Murray, quick to notice and to interpret aright her hesitation. "But you have only seen her for the first time to-day. Now I have known her for some weeks, and I have grown to love her. You do not wish," and a pathetically anxious look came into her face, "to take her away from me, do you?"

Lady Strangways' shake of her head reassured Mrs. Murray on that point.

"I hope her grandfather will leave her with me for many months to come yet," she continued. "She is very happy with me; far happier than I think any young girl ought to be with only one old deaf woman for company. But she is so occupied with her studies and her music that I think I count little one way or another with her."

"Oh, no, I cannot believe that," Lady Strangways said in a tone of remonstrance. "You are so good to her that she must be very fond of you, and appreciate all your kindness to her."

"It is not much that I can do," said Mrs. Murray. "She is so absorbed in her work that she makes her own happiness. I wish," she added, a little wistfully, "that she did desire my company a little more, but then I must not be selfish. She did not come here to make a companion of me, but to pursue her own studies. And she certainly does pursue them with an ardour that, from what her grandfather told me of her dreamy, indolent ways, I had not expected from her."

"But surely she does not want to study all day long," said Lady Strangways, with more than a hint of disapprobation in her voice. She read more into Mrs. Murray's wistful remark than the latter had intended to convey, and she began to fear that her new-found niece, in addition to being odd mannered and hasty tempered, was a thoroughly selfish young person into the bargain.

Mrs. Murray seemed to guess her thoughts.

"Now," she exclaimed in genuine distress, "I have given you a wrong impression of the dear girl. I like her to be enthusiastic about her work. It is only right that she should be. And, as I say, she did not come here to amuse and entertain a deaf old woman like myself. But all the same, I am the better for having her. Her vivacious personality cheers and brightens the house without any effort on her part. And does she not sing nicely?"

"Nicely!" echoed Lady Strangways in sheer amazement, every other thought of her niece being instantly put on one side directly her marvellous voice came under discussion. "Nicely! Is it possible that you do not know that she has a wonderful voice?"

"Yes, very nice and strong, isn't it," said Mrs. Murray, who had really only caught enough of her visitor's last remark to know that she was praising her young guest. "But I have only heard her once or twice as yet. Madame Martelli will not allow her to sing much to me, or to any one, at present. She likes to hear every note she utters. I think her grandfather will be pleased with her progress when she goes home. He told me she had a nice voice, well worth some good finishing lessons, and Madame Martelli seems to be taking great pains with her."

Lady Strangways smiled as she thought of the immense difference that lay between Mr. Anstruther's conception of the quality of his granddaughter's voice, and that voice as it actually was. But she had no time to stay and enlighten Mrs. Murray as to the truth. She was due at a house some miles away for tea, and could not stay at Rose Cottage any longer.

If the afternoon had been an exciting one for Eleanor, it had been scarcely less so for Margaret. Lady Strangways' gracious personality had made a deep and instant impression on her, and to have been obliged to look on while such a charming person as her aunt, who had come specially to make her acquaintance, was being coldly and rudely rebuffed by Eleanor acting in her place, had been really a trying ordeal for her. Her own aunt! How strange and wonderful it seemed that she, who had not known that she possessed any relatives in the world but her grandfather, had really owned an aunt all the time. An aunt, too, who was fully as anxious to know and love her as Margaret was to respond to that affection. There was in Margaret a fine large store of affection ready to be lavished upon somebody. Hitherto that affection had not been wanted by any one; but now she had her aunt's words for it that she was prepared to look upon her as a daughter. And Eleanor had answered coldly and ungraciously, while she, Margaret, would have made, oh! such a different answer if circumstances of her own contriving—therein lay the sting—had not prevented from answering on her own account at all. And, instead of talking to that nice new aunt of hers, she had been compelled to hide behind a big clump of perennial sunflowers—all her life Margaret felt she would hate those flowers—and listen to Eleanor offending and estranging her aunt with every word she uttered.

And then Eleanor had taken her aunt away to sing to her. And the exceeding beauty of Eleanor's voice as it floated out across the lawn had sent another pang through Margaret's jealous heart. Oh, she knew how it would be, she told herself miserably, as, seeking refuge in the shady little arbour where she and Eleanor held their stolen meetings, she sat down on the bench, and, resting her elbows on the little rustic table, gave herself up to her moody reflections. Eleanor would win Lady Strangways' heart so completely that, even when the truth about them came out, her aunt would have no affection left for her.

Margaret was so occupied with these dismal thoughts that she did not hear Eleanor's step on the gravel, and was considerably startled when a touch on her shoulder made her look up to see the other standing beside her. She had expected to see Eleanor wearing a triumphant, elated air, and was consequently very much surprised to find that, to judge from the expression on her face at least, Eleanor's mood was not more happy than her own.

"Has my aunt gone?" she said.

Eleanor gave a short, mocking little laugh.

"I am afraid, for the time being at any rate," she said, "I must claim half of her. So I may tell you that our aunt is still in the drawing-room. But really I couldn't stand her any longer. So I fled and left her there."

"But—but, I thought she was being so nice to you," faltered Margaret, at a loss for a moment to know what Eleanor meant, "and that you had taken a great fancy to one another."

"Oh, she was all right," said Eleanor. "I should think she was what Americans would call just a lovely person. But somehow she made me feel such a sham and a fraud that I never want to see her again, and so I would have none of her kindness. Knowing that it was not meant for me, and that I was getting it under false pretences, I was—well—so rude that I don't expect she will ever want to see me again."

"Oh!" said Margaret, and she could not help feeling just a little bit pleased to hear that Eleanor had not found favour in Lady Strangways' eyes. Certainly she did not deserve to after the way in which she had repelled all her overtures. Then, of a sudden, a disquieting thought came to her. "But oh, Eleanor," she said aghast, "can't you see that she will think that it is I, her real niece, who has been so rude to her? Oh, Eleanor, that is just as bad as, as——"

"As if she had fallen in love with me," said Eleanor, bursting out laughing. "Oh, Margaret, how transparent you are! I wonder you have been able to deceive all the Danvers family so long. But I must confess that I never thought how very unfavourably I was impressing your aunt with you. Well, well, it can't be helped now. You will put matters straight some day."

"She reminded me so much of some one," said Margaret, pursuing her own train of thought; "but I cannot think of whom. And that is curious because I have seen so few people in my life, that I ought to remember whom it is that she resembles without any difficulty. It was her eyes that puzzled me most. Such beautiful eyes they are. And I am sure I know some one else who has eyes like them."

Eleanor glanced at Margaret and then began to laugh.

"Of course you do," she said, "and so do I. You see that person every time you look in the glass. It is you yourself who have Lady Strangways' eyes, my dear Margaret."