d pink. The trilling Italian love-songs, learnt some fifty
years ago during a two years' residence in Florence, had always been her
pride and joy. So she warmly seconded her niece's pleadings, and the
momentous decision was come to that James Anderton should be approached
upon the subject. If the child learned Greek--from a professor--and
could pick up a few of Roberta's songs as an accomplishment, she might
do well enough--and a governess in the house, in spite of the money paid
by Mr. Anderton to keep her, was a continual gall and worry to them.

Halcyone knew very little about her stepfather. She was aware that he
had married her mother when she was a very poor and sorrowful young
widow, that she had had two stepsisters and a brother very close
together, and then that the pretty mother had died. There was evidently
something so sad connected with the whole story that Priscilla never
cared much to talk about it. It was always, "your poor sainted mother in
heaven," or, "your blessed pretty mother"--and with that instinctive
knowledge of the feelings of other people which characterized Halcyone's
point of view, she had avoided questioning her old nurse. Her
stepfather, James Anderton, was a very wealthy stockbroker--she knew
that, and also that a year or so after her mother's death he had married
again--"a person of his own class," Miss La Sarthe had said, "far more
suitable to him than poor Elaine."

Halcyone had only been six years old at her mother's death, but she kept
a crisp memory of the horror of it. The crimson, crumpled-looking baby
brother, in his long clothes, whose coming somehow seemed responsible
for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with
resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered
perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness.

Her mother had loved her with passionate devotion. She was conscious
even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in
comparison to herself in her mother's regard. She had a certainty that
her mother had loved her own father very much--the young, brilliant,
spendthrift, last La Sarthe. And her mother had been of the family,
too--a distant cousin. So she herself was La Sarthe to her finger
tips--slender and pale and distinguished-looking. She remembered the
last scene with her stepfather before her coming to La Sarthe Chase. It
was the culmination after a year of misery and unassuaged grieving for
her loss