, your father's cousin!"

"Indeed! Then I wish I had made the acquaintance of my father's
cousins a little earlier in life. Why have I been kept in ignorance of
my relatives? Where do they live?"

Mrs. Purling, instead of answering him, took him by the arm abruptly,
as if to ask him some searching question; then suddenly checking
herself, she said--

"Have you had lunch? It must be ready. Come into the dining-room."

"Will not Miss Driver join us?"

"She will go to the housekeeper's room, where she ought to have been
sitting, and not in my boudoir."

"Mother!"

"It's as well to be plain-spoken. Dolly Driver is not of our rank in
life. Her parents are miserably poor. Nevertheless,"--as if the crime
hardly deserved such liberal pardon,--"I am not indisposed to help
them. She is going to a situation."

"Poor girl! Companion or governess? or both?"

"Neither; she will be either housemaid or undernurse."

Harold almost jumped off his chair.

"A girl like that! as a domestic servant! Mother, it's a disgraceful
shame!"

"The disgrace is in the language you permit yourself to use to me.
Your travels have made you rather boisterous and _gauche_. What
disgrace can there be in honest work? Household work is honourable,
and was once occupation for the daughters of kings. Happily the world
grows more sensible. I look to the day as not far distant when the
wide-spread employment of lady-helps will solve that terrible
problem--the redundancy of girls."

"My cousin will not continue redundant, I feel sure."

"She is not your cousin."

"Whether or no, she should be spared the degradation you propose. She
is a girl of culture, highly educated. You cannot condemn her to the
kitchen."

"The lady-helps have their own apartment; but I decline to justify
myself."

And Mrs. Purling lapsed into silence. There was friction between them
already.

"Where are you going?" she asked, when lunch was over.

"To the housekeeper's room."

"Harold, I forbid you. It's highly improper--it's absolutely
indelicate."

"She is my cousin; besides there is a _chaperone_, Mrs. Haigh, or I'll
call in the cook."

"Do you mean to set me at defiance?"

"I mean to do what I consider right, even although my views may not
coincide with yours, mother."

For the rest of the day, indeed, Harold never left his newly-found
cousin's side. The heiress fumed and fretted, and scolded, but all in
vain. There was a new kind of masterfulness about