s in which she had been indulging during the afternoon
had been poured into her grandfather's angry ears. And it was positive
agony to her shy nature to know that her shadowy friend was no longer her
own secret.

"Kindly have the goodness to answer my question. Seeing that but a
few minutes have elapsed since you were proving yourself capable of
sustaining both sides of a conversation, I think that it cannot be too
great a strain upon you to reply to my question now. Do you hear me?"

All trace of anger had vanished now both from Mr. Anstruther's face and
from his manner, and he spoke in the cold, precise tones, and framed his
sentences in the rather stilted manner habitual to him.

"Yes, grandfather," Margaret gasped in a very small voice. She was rarely
at ease with her grandfather--he had never taken any pains to render her
so--and when he addressed her in tones of semi-sarcasm she grew so
disconcerted that she could not answer him coherently. And, as the more
confused she became the more caustic his tongue waxed; their interviews,
brief though they were, often concluded with anger on his part and with
tears on hers.

"Then I should be obliged if you would have the kindness to answer me."

"I--I forget what it was that you asked me," stammered Margaret.

"Oh, I do not flatter myself that my questions can vie in interest with
those addressed to you by your imaginary friend. Nevertheless, I should
be glad if you will kindly pay attention to them. I asked you if it was
in this profitable manner that you usually passed your afternoons now."

"Sometimes, grandfather."

"Then I will find you something else to do. What is it that you ought to
be doing at this hour?"

"Three to four. Take exercise," said Margaret in the tone of a child
repeating a lesson.

"And this is the way in which you take it? By sitting and dreaming
away your time in nonsense and folly and in making up silly, idle
conversations with idiotic creatures of your own imagination. I gave even
you, Margaret, credit for more sense. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Now, if Margaret had murmured the meek affirmative reply that was
obviously expected of her, the whole course of her life might have been
different. Her grandfather would probably have delivered himself of a few
more harsh strictures, and then Margaret would have been dismissed to the
house, with orders to double her morrow's lessons.

But though she winced at the scorn with which he sp