rbing subject of Mrs
Mildmay's return.

And in response to a pressing invitation from the old lady, Miss Mildmay
actually managed to spare or make time to come out to Robin Redbreast to
'spend the day'--that is to say, three or four hours of it, so that she
and Lady Myrtle might have a talk about the plans under discussion.

The day chosen was the one in which Frances and Eugene were to return to
Market Square Place. The big carriage was to take them and their aunt
and Phebe home in the afternoon, leaving Jacinth for another week at
Robin Redbreast.

Never had her nieces found Miss Mildmay so pleasant and almost genial.
She was greatly delighted at the news of her sister-in-law's
return--delighted and relieved. For it had begun to strike her rather
uncomfortably that what she had undertaken was all but an impossibility.
She was very conscientious, as I have said, and no self-deceiver. She
saw that the girls, as they grew older, were becoming not less but more
in need of sympathy and guidance in their out-of-school life--sympathy
and guidance which at best she felt very doubtful of being able to give
them, _even_ if she sacrificed all the other duties and occupations
which had for so many years made her life, for their sakes. And the
sacrifice would have been a very tremendous one.

The doubts and perplexities were increasing daily in her mind when there
came this most welcome and little expected news, followed by the almost
as welcome tidings of Lady Myrtle's eager offer of hospitality to the
children's mother.

'It is very good, very, very kind and good of her,' said Miss Mildmay to
herself. 'The children's making friends with her really seems to have
brought good-luck. And she may be of lasting and substantial help to
Frank and Eugenia. Not exactly because she is rich--Frank is far too
proud to take anybody's money--but she may have interest that would be
of use to him. And there would be nothing unnatural in her leaving
something to Eugenia or to Jacinth. I don't suppose she means to leave
everything to the Elvedons, for a good deal would have been her own
share in any case, and a good deal her husband must have left her. By
the bye, I have always forgotten to ask Miss Scarlett if the Harper
girls she has, or had--some one said they had left--were any relation to
the Elvedon family. Nice girls, evidently, but very badly off, I fancy.'

And then she forgot about the Harpers again.

But with her grateful feelin