d it took at least two years to get over it. What
things I did to please that young man and appear lovely in his eyes! The
hours it took to dress, and get my hair done just right. I endured
tortures if I didn't look as beautiful as I thought I could look, and
was always giving my poor maid notice. And plots--the way I plotted to
get taken to the places where he would be! I never was so artful before
or since. Poor Susie was quite helpless. It is a mercy it all ended as
it did."

"That," repeated Uncle Joachim, "was not true love."

"Yes, it was."

"No, my child."

"Yes, my uncle. I laugh now, but it was very dreadful at the time."

"Thou art but a goose," he said, shrugging his shoulders; but
immediately patted her hand lest her feelings should have been hurt.
And, declining further argument, he demanded to be taken to the Great
Vine.

It was in this fashion, Anna talking and Uncle Joachim making brief
comments, that he came to know her as thoroughly as though he had lived
with her all his life.

Soon after the excursion to Hampton Court a letter came that hurried his
departure, to Susie's ill-concealed relief.

"My swines are ill," he informed her, greatly agitated, his fragile
English going altogether to pieces in his perturbation; "my inspector
writes they perpetually die. God keep thee, Anna," and he embraced her
very tenderly, and bending hastily over Susie's hand muttered some
conventionalities, and then disappeared into his four-wheeler and out of
their lives.

They never saw him again.

"My swines are ill," mimicked Susie, when Anna, feeling that she had
lost her one friend, came slowly back into the room, "my swines
perpetually die--"

Anna was obliged to go and pray very hard at St. Paul's before she could
forgive her.

CHAPTER III

The old man died at Christmas, and in the following March, when Anna was
going about more sad and listless than ever, the news came that, though
his inherited estates had gone to his sons, he had bought a little place
some years before with the intention of retiring to it in his extreme
old age, and this little place he had left to his dear and only niece
Anna.

She was alone when the letters bringing the news arrived, sitting in the
drawing-room with a book in her hands at which she did not look, feeling
utterly downcast, indifferent, too hopeless to want anything or mind
anything, accepting her destiny of years of days like this, with herself
going th