pt soon and soundly on her first night in
the vast, gloomy bedchamber wherein it was her father's pleasure that
she should be installed.

She had not expected to do so.

The room was known as the "Blue Room"; but years had faded the blue,
which now only stood out with any clearness in creases of the curtains,
or remote patches of carpet on which the light never fell. Otherwise a
dull grey prevailed.

Nevertheless Leo had been fond of the "Blue Room" in early days;
revelling in its mysterious depths, hiding in its capacious
hiding-holes, and, finest fun of all, making hay in its huge four-poster
with some little friend of her own age. It was an apartment so seldom
used, and its furniture was so shabby and out-of-date, that Sue would
readily accede to the little girls' petition to be despatched
thither--only exacting a promise that there should be no climbing of
window-sills, which promise had been broken, and confessed
honourably--whereupon Sue, who was herself a woman of honour, never once
mentioned window-sills again. The windows, deepset and high up in the
wall, with broad sills inviting to perch upon, only existed as roofs for
the cupboards beneath, once Leo had succumbed to temptation and gone
unpunished. "No, dear, there is no need for any more punishment," Sue
had said in her kindest accents,--and when Sue spoke like that, the
little saucy upstart Leonore, whom usually nothing could repress, would
be good for days.

Consequently the apartment had its associations; and under other
circumstances its new occupant would have found it pleasant enough to
look upon it as her own. But weary and dejected, with all the world in
shadow around her, it is scarcely to be wondered at that she should
shrink into herself, and look piteously up into Sue's face, as Sue
turned the handle of the door.

"Am I--am I to be here, Sue?"

"Father says so, dear."

"But, Sue, couldn't I--some little room--?"

"Oh, I think you will be very comfortable here, Leo; you will have
plenty of space for your belongings," she glanced at the array of
trunks,--"and you can always remain in undisturbed possession," summed
up Sue cheerfully. "The other spare rooms----"

"I never thought of _them_. My own little old room----" faltered Leo.

She had settled this with herself beforehand. Although it was on the top
storey, and in a somewhat despised quarter, she had loved her small
domain because it was hers and she might pull it about as she
cho