. "I was only going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots to
do instead of wasting his time looking after strangers, and if he hadn't I
don't want to be looked after. I don't want him to bother about
me--I--I--" It did not want much more to start her off in a wild fit of
weeping about nothing, her mind for some reason or other unknown even to
herself was worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin when
the woes of Rafferty had caused her to make such an exhibition of herself
in the library. Anything was possible with Phyl when under the influence
of unreasoning emotion like this, anything from flinging a knife at a
person to breaking into tears.

Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding in the least the
psychological mechanism of Phyl, she knew as a woman and by some
electrical influence the state of her mind.

She rose from the table.

"Stranger," said she, taking the other by the arm, "you call yourself a
stranger. Come along upstairs with me. I want to show you something."

Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the hall
and up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it was
the door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and size
and with the same view over the garden.

Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its entirety without alteration
or touch save the touch of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of a
girl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a woman old and
decrepit--had she lived.

"Here's the picture you wanted to see," said Miss Pinckney leading Phyl up
to a miniature hanging on the wall near the bed. "That's Juliet, and if
you don't see the family likeness, well, then, you must be blind.--And you
calling yourself a stranger!"

Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking little portrait; she
fancied it was like herself but was not sure, the colour of the hair was
almost the same but the way it was dressed made a lot of difference, and
she said so.

"Well, they did their hair different then," replied Miss Pinckney, "and
that reminds me, it's near time you put that tail up." She sat down in a
rocker by the window and with her hands on her knees contemplated Phyl.
"I'm your only female relative, and Lord knows I'm far enough off, anyhow
I'm something with a skirt on it, and brains in its head, and that's what
a girl most wants when she comes to your age. You'll be asked to parties
and things here and you'