d to me!
All this motion! Look down at that great field there, not cut up into
squares! If I only had my knights and squires there! I would be willing
to give her as good a field, too; but I would show her where the true
bravery lies. What a place for the castles, just to defend that pass!"

The Doctor whipped up his horse.

Mrs. Lester was a little surprised at the companion her husband had
brought home to breakfast with him.

"Who is it?" she whispered.

"That I don't know,--I shall have to find out," he answered, a little
nervously.

"Where is her bonnet?" asked Mrs. Lester; this was the first absence of
conventionality she had noticed.

"You had better ask her," answered the Doctor.

But Mrs. Lester preferred leaving her guest in the parlor while she
questioned her husband. She was somewhat disturbed when she found he had
nothing more satisfactory to tell her.

"An insane girl! and what shall we do with her?" she asked.

"After breakfast I will make some inquiries about her," answered the
Doctor.

"And leave her alone with us? that will never do! You must take her away
directly,--at least to the Insane Asylum,--somewhere! What if she should
grow wild while you were gone? She might kill us all! I will go in and
tell her that she cannot stay here."

On returning to the parlor, she found Isabella looking dreamily out of
the window. As Mrs. Lester approached, she turned.

"You will let me stay with you a little while, will you not?"

She spoke in a quiet tone, with an air somewhat commanding. It imposed
upon nervous little Mrs. Lester. But she made a faint struggle.

"Perhaps you would rather go home," she said.

"I have no home now," said Isabella; "some time I may recover it; but my
throne has been usurped."

Mrs. Lester looked round in alarm, to see if the Doctor were near.

"Perhaps you had better come in to breakfast," she suggested.

She was glad to place the Doctor between herself and their new guest.

Celia Lester, the only daughter, came down stairs. She had heard that
her father had picked up a lost girl in the road. As she came down in
her clean morning dress, she expected to have to hold her skirts away
from some little squalid object of charity. She started when she saw the
elegant-looking young girl who sat at the table. There was something in
her air and manner that seemed to make the breakfast equipage, and the
furniture of the room about her, look a little mean and poor. Yet the