, she had chosen to drive down to Woodford Cottage. She talked for
half-an-hour in her mild, limpid way; and then, when the arrival of
one of Olive's models broke the quiet leisure of the painting-room, she
rose.

"Nay, Miss Rothesay, do not quit your easel; Miss Van-brugh will
accompany me through the garden, and besides, I wish to speak to her
about her clematis. We cannot make them grow in S--shire; the Hall is
perhaps too cold and bleak."

"Ah, how I love a clear bracing air!" said Mrs. Rothesay, with the
restlessness peculiar to all invalids--and she had been a greater
invalid than usual this summer.

"Then you must come down, as I said--you and Miss Rothesay--to S--shire;
our part of the country is very beautiful. I should be most happy to see
you at Farnwood."

She urged the invitation with an easy grace, even cordiality, which
charmed Mrs. Rothesay, to whom it brought back the faint reflex of her
olden life--the life at Merivale Hall.

"I should like to go, Olive," she said, appealingly. "I feel dull, and
want a change."

"You shall have a change, darling," was the soothing but evasive answer.
For Olive had a tincture of the old Rothesay pride, and had formed a
somewhat disagreeable idea of the position the struggling artist and her
blind mother would fill as charity-guests at Farnwood Hall. So, after a
little conversation with Mrs. Fludyer, she contrived that the first
plan should melt into one more feasible. There was a pretty cottage,
the squire's lady said, on the Farnwood estate; Miss Fludyer's daily
governess had lived there; it was all fitted up. What if Miss Rothesay
would bring her mother there for the summer months? It would be pleasant
for all parties.

And so, very quickly, the thing was decided--decided as suddenly and
unexpectedly as things are, when it seems as though not human will, but
destiny held the balance.

Mrs. Fludyer seemed really pleased and interested; she talked to Miss
Meliora less about her clematis than about her two inmates--a subject
equally grateful to the painter's sister.

"There is something quite charming about Miss Rothesay--the air and
manner of one who has always moved in good society. Do you know who she
was? I should apologise for the question, but that a friend of mine,
looking at her picture, was struck by the name, and desired me to
inquire."

Meliora explained that she believed Olive's family was Scottish, and
that her father was a Captain Angus Rothes