she's asked. I heard her
apologizing to Miss Russell yesterday for giving an order to the
gardener. Mademoiselle says she is 'bien elevee' and 'tres gentille',
and that's a great compliment, for she doesn't admire English girls as a
rule."

"No one could help liking Monica," said Kathleen Crawford. "She's
charming. I call her one of the nicest girls I've ever met. And she's
had such hard luck! I've just been hearing all about her from Irene
Spencer."

"How does Irene know?" asked Lindsay.

"She stays sometimes with an uncle who is vicar of the next parish, and
her cousins are friends of Monica's. It's a most extraordinary story--it
might have come out of a book."

"Oh, do tell us!" said the others eagerly.

Kathleen's tale was in scraps, and missed out several points of which
she was not aware at the time, so it will be better to set it down here
as the girls learnt it more fully afterwards, for it was of great
importance, and formed the basis of much that was to follow.

The Courtenays, it appeared, were a very ancient family, and had
inherited the Manor from an ancestor who had fought bravely on the
Yorkist side in the days of the Wars of the Roses. In the present
generation there was no male heir, and Monica was the last of her race.

Until a few years ago the old house had been in the possession of her
great-uncle, Sir Giles Courtenay, a most eccentric man, so odd and
peculiar, indeed, that many people had considered him to be out of his
mind. He was reputed to be extremely wealthy, yet lived in a miserly
fashion, entertaining no visitors, and never spending a penny which it
was possible for him to save. He never married, but passed his days as a
recluse, shut up among the books in his library, seeing only a few old
servants whose services he had retained. Sometimes in the early morning
he would wander about the woods and fields in the neighbourhood, seeking
for wild flowers, but on such occasions he seemed much annoyed if spoken
to, and evidently preferred to take his rambles unnoticed.

At his death he left everything to his great-niece, Monica.

"Both the Manor", so ran the will, "and all that it may contain,
especially commending to her the volumes in my library, and advising her
to pursue the study of botany, which has ever been a solace and a
distraction to me amidst the various ills and disappointments of life."

At first it was supposed that Monica must be a great heiress, but when
Sir Giles's le