not explain. On coming in sight of the terrace, she saw that Mrs.
Champney was still there. She hesitated a moment, then crossed the lawn
to the boat house. She wanted to sit there a while in the shade, to
think things out with herself if possible. What did this mean--this
strange feeling of timidity?

The course of her life was not wholly smooth. It was inevitable that two
natures like hers and Mrs. Champney's should clash at times, and the
impact was apt to be none of the softest. Twice, Aileen, making a
confidant of Octavius, threatened to run away, for the check rein was
held too tightly, and the young life became restive under it. When the
child first came to Champ-au-Haut, its mistress recognized at once that
in her mischief, her wilfulness, her emphatic assertion of her right of
way, there was nothing vicious, and to Octavius Buzzby's amazement, she
dealt with her, on the whole, leniently.

"She amuses me," she would say when closing an eye to some of Aileen's
escapades that gave a genuine shock to Octavius in the region of his
local prejudices.

There had been, indeed, no "folderols" in her education. Sewing,
cooking, housework she was taught root and branch in the time not spent
at school, both grammar and high. During the last year Mrs. Champney
permitted her to learn French and embroidery in a systematic manner at
the school established by the gentle Frenchwomen in The Gore; but she
steadily refused to permit the girl to cultivate her voice through the
medium of proper instruction. This denial of the girl's strongest desire
was always a common subject of dissension and irritation; however, after
Aileen was seventeen a battle royal of words between the two was a rare
occurrence.

At the same time she never objected to Aileen's exercising her talent in
her own way. Father Honore encouraged her to sing to the accompaniment
of his violin, knowing well that the instrument would do its share in
correcting faults. She sang, too, with Luigi Poggi, her "knothole boy"
of the asylum days; and, as seven years before, Nonna Lisa often
accompanied with her guitar. The old Italian, who had managed to keep in
touch with her one-time _protegee_, and her grandson Luigi, made their
appearance in the village one summer after Aileen had been two years in
Flamsted. Luigi, now that his vaudeville days were over, was in search
of work at the quarries; his grandmother was to keep house for him till
he should be able to establish