sleep in happy confidence that 'mamma' would put it
all right. How delightful it was to have her at hand to lean upon!

But Mrs Mildmay had spoken rather more confidently about Jacinth than
she quite felt. Frances's words reminded her of the cold, unsympathising
way in which her elder daughter had alluded in her letters to the
Harpers; after knowing all that Frances had written to her mother.

'Jacinth is thoughtful and considerate beyond her years,' thought she,
'but I do trust she is no way selfish or calculating. Oh no, that is
impossible. I must not be fanciful. Marmy warned me that I might find
her self-contained and even self-opinionated, but that is very different
from anything mean or selfish. It is sad, all the same, to know nothing
of one's own child for one's self, at first hand. Whatever the poor
Harpers' trials have been,' she went on, as Frances had once said to
Bessie, 'at least they have been spared this terrible, unnatural
separation.'

And the thought brought back to her again the task that was before her
on the morrow. She was not a little nervous about it. 'But I must not
delay,' she said to herself. 'If anything is to be done to help them in
this present crisis, it must be at once. And I promised Mrs Lyle not to
put off. I wonder when I shall have the best chance of a good talk with
Lady Myrtle. Alison is coming over in the morning, she said. Naturally
she is anxious to hear all about Frank. I wish it had not happened that
I was obliged to begin upon a certainly _painful_, a possibly offensive
topic with the dear old lady just at the very first! And when she is so
very, very good to us!'

But Eugenia Mildmay was not the type of woman to shrink from what she
believed to be an undoubted duty because it was painful to herself, or
even to others.

'Dear little Frances,' was almost her last waking thought, 'I feel as if
I already understood _her_ perfectly. And oh, I do hope I shall be wise
and judicious with my Jassie too.'

Every trace of fatigue had vanished from Mrs Mildmay's bright face when
they all met at breakfast the next morning; the 'all' including Lady
Myrtle, who had now begun again to come down early, since the fine mild
weather had, for the time, dispelled her chronic bronchitis. She looked
round the table with a beaming face.

'It is long since I have had such a party at breakfast,' she said.
'Never before, I think, indeed, since I have been settled at Robin
Redbreast, and that is