--"

"I hope I can afford to keep my daughter as long as I am alive," said
Mr. Colwyn with some vehemence. "There, don't be vexed, my dear child,"
and he laid his hand tenderly on Janetta's shoulder, "nobody blames you;
and your friend erred perhaps from over-affection; but Miss
Polehampton"--with energy--"is a vulgar, self-seeking, foolish old
woman, and I won't have you enter into relations with her again."

And then he left the room, and Janetta, forcing back the tears in her
eyes, did her best to smile when Georgie and Tiny hugged her
simultaneously and Jinks beat a tattoo upon her knee.

"Well," said Mrs. Colwyn, lugubriously, "I hope everything will turn out
for the best; but it is not at all nice, Janetta, to think that Miss
Adair has been expelled for your sake, or that you are thrown out of
work without a character, so to speak. I should think the Adairs would
see that, and would make some compensation. If they don't offer to do
so, your papa might suggest it----"

"I'm sure father would never suggest anything of the kind," Janetta
flashed out; but before Mrs. Colwyn could protest, a diversion was
effected by the entrance of the missing Nora, and all discussion was
postponed to a more fitting moment.

For to look at Nora was to forget discussion. She was the eldest of the
second Mrs. Colwyn's children--a girl just seventeen, taller than
Janetta and thinner, with the thinness of immature girlhood, but with a
fair skin and a mop of golden-brown hair, which curled so naturally that
her younger brother's statement concerning those fair locks must surely
have been a libel. She had a vivacious, narrow, little face, with large
eyes like a child's--that is to say, they had the transparent look that
one sees in some children's eyes, as if the color had been laid on in a
single wash without any shadows. They were very pretty eyes, and gave
light and expression to a set of rather small features, which might have
been insignificant if they had belonged to an insignificant person. But
Nora Colwyn was anything but insignificant.

"Have your fine friends gone?" she said, peeping into the room in
pretended alarm. "Then I may come in. How are you, Janetta, after your
sojourn in the halls of dazzling light?"

"Don't be absurd, Nora," said her sister, with a sudden backward dart of
remembrance to the tranquil beauty of the rooms at Helmsley Court and
the silver accents of Lady Caroline. "Why didn't you come down before?"