said, in the curious low voice habitual
to her, which made it almost as difficult for other people to hear what
she said as she found it to hear what they said. "I left you with her so
long on purpose that you might make her acquaintance. Is she not a
charming girl?"

Now as "charming" was certainly not the word which her short experience
of Eleanor's behaviour that afternoon would have led her to apply to her
niece, Lady Strangways hesitated.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Murray, quick to notice and to interpret aright her
hesitation. "But you have only seen her for the first time to-day. Now I
have known her for some weeks, and I have grown to love her. You do not
wish," and a pathetically anxious look came into her face, "to take her
away from me, do you?"

Lady Strangways' shake of her head reassured Mrs. Murray on that point.

"I hope her grandfather will leave her with me for many months to come
yet," she continued. "She is very happy with me; far happier than I think
any young girl ought to be with only one old deaf woman for company. But
she is so occupied with her studies and her music that I think I count
little one way or another with her."

"Oh, no, I cannot believe that," Lady Strangways said in a tone of
remonstrance. "You are so good to her that she must be very fond of you,
and appreciate all your kindness to her."

"It is not much that I can do," said Mrs. Murray. "She is so absorbed in
her work that she makes her own happiness. I wish," she added, a little
wistfully, "that she did desire my company a little more, but then I must
not be selfish. She did not come here to make a companion of me, but to
pursue her own studies. And she certainly does pursue them with an ardour
that, from what her grandfather told me of her dreamy, indolent ways, I
had not expected from her."

"But surely she does not want to study all day long," said Lady
Strangways, with more than a hint of disapprobation in her voice. She
read more into Mrs. Murray's wistful remark than the latter had intended
to convey, and she began to fear that her new-found niece, in addition to
being odd mannered and hasty tempered, was a thoroughly selfish young
person into the bargain.

Mrs. Murray seemed to guess her thoughts.

"Now," she exclaimed in genuine distress, "I have given you a wrong
impression of the dear girl. I like her to be enthusiastic about her
work. It is only right that she should be. And, as I say, she did not
come here to amus