the
threshold, and with her a little old lady. The little old lady had a
bright, delicately cut face, eyes of whose expressiveness there could be
no question, and large grey curls. She wore a large hat, with large bows
tied under her chin, and a dark-green satin driving-cloak lined with
white and grey fur.

She looked like a fairy godmother, like the ghost of an ancestor--like
"somebody out of a picture." She was my great-grandmother.

CHAPTER VII.

MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER--THE DUCHESS'S CARRIAGE--MRS. O'CONNOR IS CURIOUS.

I was much discomfited. My position was not a dignified one at the best,
and in childhood such small shames seem too terrible ever to be
outlived. My great-grandmother laughed heartily, and Mrs. Buller, whose
sense of humour was small, looked annoyed.

"What in the world are you doing here, Margery?" she said.

I had little or no moral courage, and I had not been trained in high
principles. If I could have thought of a plausible lie, I fear I should
have told it in my dilemma. As it was, I could not; I only put my hand
to my burning cheek, and said:

"Let me see!"

I must certainly have presented a very comical appearance, but the
little old lady's smiles died away, and her eyes filled with tears.

"It is strange, is it not," she said to Aunt Theresa, "that, after all,
I should laugh at this meeting?"

Then, sitting down on a box by the door, she held out her hands to me,
saying:

"Come, little Margery, there is no sin in practising one's good manners
before the mirror. Come and kiss me, dear child; I am your father's
father's mother. Is not that to be an old woman? I am your
great-grandmother."

My great-grandmother's voice was very soft, her cheek was soft, her
cloak was soft. I buried my face in the fur, and cried quietly to myself
with shame and excitement; she stroking my head, and saying:

"_Pauvre petite!_--thou an orphan, and I doubly childless! It is thus we
meet at last to join our hands across the graves of two generations of
those we love!"

"It was a dreadful thing!" said Mrs. Buller, rummaging in her pocket for
a clean handkerchief. "I'm sure I never should forget it, if I lived a
thousand years. I never seemed able to realize that they were gone; it
was all so sudden."

The old lady made no answer, and we all wept in silence.

Aunt Theresa was the first to recover herself, and she insisted on our
coming down-stairs. A young regimental surgeon and his wife drop