in her voice, a
suggestion of passionate tears, but the child held herself in check.

"Ellice, darling, it will be better if you--"

"If I don't go. I know, but I am going. You--you can't turn me out,
Connie. I am too strong; I shall cling to the sides of the cart."

There was a look, half of laughter, half of defiance, in the girl's
eyes.

"Connie, I am going, and nothing shall prevent me!"

Connie sighed, and stepped into the cart and took up the reins. "Very
well, dear!" she said resignedly.

"You are angry with me, Connie?"

"Why should you want to go to Starden?"

"I want to see her again. I want to--to understand, to--to know things."

"What do you mean, to understand, to know things?"

"I want to watch her!"

"Ellice, you will make me angry presently. Ellice," Connie added
suddenly, "I suppose you don't intend to make a scene, and make yourself
foolish and--and cheap?"

"I shall say nothing. I only want to watch and to try and understand."

"I think you are acting foolishly and wrongly, Ellice. I think you are a
very foolish child!"

"I wish," Ellice said, and said it without passion, but with a deep
certainty in her voice, "I wish that I were dead, Connie."

"You ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself," said Connie, who could
think of nothing better to say.

She made one more attempt when Starden was reached.

"Ellice, child, why not go back with Hobbins?"

"I am coming with you," Ellice said.

"You--you will not--I mean you will--not be silly or rude to--"

Ellice drew herself up with a childish dignity. "I shall not forget that
I am a lady, Connie," she said, and said it with such stateliness and
such dignity that Connie felt no inclination to laugh.

Helen frowned. She was annoyed at the sight of Ellice, frankly she did
not like the girl. Helen was a good, honest woman who liked everything
that was good and honest. Ellice Brand might be good and honest, but
there was something about the girl that was beyond Helen's ken. She was
so elfin, so gipsy-like, so different from most girls Helen knew, and
had known.

During the long afternoon, when they sat for a time in the garden, or in
the shady drawing-room, Joan was aware of the fixed and intent gaze of a
pair of dark eyes. Strangely and wonderfully dark were those eyes, and
they seemed to possess some magnetic power, a power of making themselves
felt. More than once in the middle of saying something to Helen or to
Connie, Joan fo