odgings could not possibly be as much, for we would
be content with two rooms at first.'

The lawyer read the items through with as grave an air and as
attentively as if he were reading an important document dealing with
thousands of pounds; and when he had finished he handed it back to her,
saying, 'I see, you have thought the matter out carefully, and, at all
events, there is no need to settle anything just yet, for you have
another month before everything can be settled up here. I shall write
to-night in answer to this advertisement.' And then shaking hands very
kindly with the girl, the lawyer showed her out.

Stella made her way back to the old Manor House, in which she had lived
with her father, mother (who had died some years ago), and her younger
sister Vava, ever since she was born, and where a week ago her father
had suddenly died, leaving his two daughters, as will have been seen,
very inadequately provided for. At the gate, or, more correctly
speaking, upon the gate, was Vava, who swung lightly over and into the
road to meet her sister.

'Well,' she said, 'what had Mr. Stacey to say?'

'A great deal,' said Stella gravely, as Vava took her arm and hung on to
her elder sister.

There were seven years between the two girls, the gap between having
been filled by three brothers, who had all died.

'Stella,' said Vava in a coaxing tone, as they turned in at the gate and
walked up the long drive, 'you need not be afraid of telling me about
it, because I know it all--everything.'

'What do you know?' inquired Stella, smiling in spite of her sadness.

'I know everything that Mr. Stacey said to you,' announced the younger
girl confidently.

'How can you possibly know that, Vava, seeing that I have not told you a
single word and that you were not at the interview?' Stella was always
very matter-of-fact, and Vava would say that she was slow.

'I knew what he was going to say before he ever opened his mouth. He was
going to tell you that we had lost all our money, and that this Manor
House is not ours any longer, that I must go to a cheap school, and that
you must go and be a governess, or something horrid like that,'
announced Vava.

'Vava, who told you?' cried Stella, surprised out of her caution, for
she had not meant to tell her younger sister the real facts of the case.

'Mrs. Stacey has been here, and she told me that there were some other
people coming to the Manor House. When I said we didn't want t