It was a day of great excitement, and Audrey Wynford stood by her schoolroom window and looked out. She was a tall girl of sixteen, with her hair hanging in a long, fair plait down her back. She stood with her hands folded behind her and an expectant expression on her face.

Up the avenue a stream of people were coming. Some came in cabs, some on bicycles; some walked. They all turned in the direction of the front entrance, and Audrey heard their voices rising and falling as they entered the house, walked down the hall, and disappeared into some region at the other end.

“It is all detestable,” she muttered; “and just when Evelyn is coming, too. How strange she will think it! I wish father would drop this horrid custom. I do not approve of it at all.”

Just then her governess, a bright-looking girl about six years Audrey’s senior, came into the room.

“Well,” she cried, “and what are you doing here? I thought you were going to ride this afternoon.”

“How can I?” said Audrey, shrugging her shoulders. “I shall be met at every turn.”

“And why not?” said Miss Sinclair. “You are not ashamed of being seen.”

“It is quite detestable,” said Audrey.

She crossed the room, flung herself into a deep straw armchair in front of a blazing log fire, and took up a magazine.

“It is all horrid,” she continued as she rapidly turned the pages; “you know it, Miss Sinclair, as well as I do.”

“If I were you,” said Miss Sinclair, “I should be proud—very proud—to belong to an old family who had kept a custom like this in vogue.”

“If you belonged to the old family you would not,” said Audrey. “Every one laughs at us. I call it perfectly horrid. What possible good can it do that all the people of the neighborhood, and the strangers who come to stay in the town, should make free of Wynford Castle on New Year’s Day? It makes me cross anyhow. I am sorry to be cross to you, Miss Sinclair; but I am, and that is a fact.”

Miss Sinclair sat down on another chair.

“I like it,” she said after a pause.

“Why?” asked Audrey.

“There were some quite hungry people passing through the hall as I came to you just now.”

“Let them be hungry somewhere else, not here,” said the angry girl. “It was all very well when some ancestor of mine first started the custom; but that father, a man of the present day, up-to-date in every sense of the word, should carry it on—that he should keep open house for every individual who chooses to come here on New Year’s Day—is past endurance. Last year between two and three hundred people dined or supped or had tea at the Castle, and I believe, from the appearance of the avenue, there will be still more to-day. The house gets so dirty, for one thing, for half of them don’t think of wiping their feet; and then we run a chance of being robbed, for how do we know that there are not adventurers in the throng? If I were the country-folk I would be too proud to come; but they are not—not a bit.”

“I cannot agree with you,” said Miss Sinclair. “It is a splendid old custom, and I hope it will not be abolished.”

“Perhaps Evelyn will abolish it when she comes in for the property,” said Audrey in a low tone. Her face looked scarcely amiable as she said the words.

Miss Sinclair regarded her with a puzzled expression.

“Audrey dear,” she said after a pause, “I am very fond of you.”

“And I of you,” said Audrey a little unwillingly. “You are more friend than governess. I should like best to go to school, of course; but as father says that that is quite impossible, I have to put up with the next best; and you are a very good next best.”

“Then if I am, may I just as a friend, and one who loves you very dearly, make a remark?”

“It is going to be something odious,” said Audrey—“that goes without saying—but I suppose I’ll listen.”

“Don’t you think you are just a wee bit in danger of becoming selfish, Audrey?” said her governess.

“Am I? Perhaps so; I am afraid I don’t care.”

“You would if you thought it over; and this is New Year’s Day, and it is a lovely afternoon, and you might come for a ride—I wish you would.”

“I will not run the chance of meeting those folks on any consideration whatever,” said Audrey; “but I will go for a walk with you, if you like.”

“Done,” said Miss Sinclair. “I have to go on a message for Lady Wynford to the lodge; will you come by the shrubberies and meet me there?”

“All right,” replied Audrey; “I will go and get ready.”

She left the room.

After her pupil had left her, Miss Sinclair sat for a time gazing into the huge log fire.

She was a very pretty girl, with a high-bred look about her. She had received all the advantages which modern education could afford, and at the age of three-and-twenty had left Girton with the assurance from all her friends that she had a brilliant future before her. The first step in that future seemed bright enough to the handsome, high-spirited girl. Lady Wynford met her in town, took a fancy to her on the spot, and asked her to conduct Audrey’s education. Miss Sinclair received a liberal salary and every comfort and consideration. Audrey fell quickly in love with her, and a more delightful pupil governess never had. The girl was brimming over with intelligence, was keenly alive to the responsibilities of her own position, was absolutely original, and as a rule quite unselfish.

“Poor Audrey! she has her trials before her, all the same,” thought the young governess now. “Well, I am very happy here, and I hope nothing will disturb our present arrangement for some time. As to Evelyn, we have yet to discover what sort of girl she is. She comes this evening. But there, I am forgetting all about Audrey, and she must be waiting for me.”

It so happened that Audrey Wynford was doing nothing of the sort. She had hastily put on her warm jacket and fur cap and gone out into the grounds. The objectionable avenue, with its streams of people coming and going, was to be religiously avoided, and Audrey went in the direction of a copse of young trees, which led again through a long shrubbery in the direction of the lodge gates.

It was the custom from time immemorial in the Wynford family to keep open house on New Year’s Day. Any wayfarer, gentle or simple, man or woman, boy or girl, could come up the avenue and ring the bell at the great front-door, and be received and fed and refreshed, and sent again on his or her way with words of cheer. The Squire himself as a rule received his guests, but where that was impossible the steward of the estate was present to conduct them to the huge hall which ran across the back of the house, where unlimited refreshments were provided. No one was sent away. No one was refused admission on this day of all days. The period of the reception was from sunrise to sundown. At sundown the hospitality came to an end; the doors of the house were shut and no more visitors were allowed admission. An extra staff of servants was generally secured for the occasion, and the one and only condition made by the Squire was, that as much food as possible might be eaten, that each male visitor might drink good wine or sound ale to his heart’s content, that each might warm himself thoroughly by the huge log fires, but that no one should take any food away. This, in the case of so promiscuous an assemblage, was necessary. To Audrey, however, the whole thing was more or less a subject of dislike. She regarded the first day of each year as a penance; she shrank from the subject of the guests, and on this special New Year’s Day was more aggrieved and put out than usual. More guests had arrived than had ever come before, for the people of the neighborhood enjoyed the good old custom, and there was not a villager, not a trades-person, nor even a landed proprietor near who did not make it a point of breaking bread at Wynford Castle on New Year’s Day. The fact that a man of position sat down side by side with a tramp or a laborer made no difference; there was no distinction of rank amongst the Squire’s guests on this day.

Audrey heard the voices now as she disappeared into the shelter of the young trees. She heard also the rumble of wheels as the better class of guests arrived or went away again.

“It is horrid,” she murmured for about the twentieth time to herself; and then she began to run in order to get away from what she called the disagreeable noise.

Audrey could run with the speed and grace of a young fawn, but she had not gone half-through the shrubbery before she stopped dead-short. A girl of about her own age was coming hurriedly to meet her. She was a very pretty girl, with black eyes and a quantity of black hair and a richly colored dark face. The girl was dressed somewhat fantastically in many colors. Peeping out from beneath her old-fashioned jacket was a scarf of deep yellow; the skirt of her dress was crimson, and in her hat she wore two long crimson feathers. Audrey regarded her with not only wonder but also disfavor. Who was she? What a vulgar, forward, insufferable young person!

“I say,” cried the girl, coming up eagerly; “I have lost my way, and it is so important! Can you tell me how I can get to the front entrance of the Castle?”

“You ought not to have come by the shrubbery,” said Audrey in a very haughty tone. “The visitors who come to the Castle to-day are expected to use the avenue. But now that you have come,” she added, “if you will take this short cut you will find yourself in the right direction. You have then but to follow the stream of people and you will reach the hall door.”

“Oh, thank you!” said the girl. “I am so awfully hungry! I do hope I shall get in before sunset. Good-by, and thank you so much! My name is Sylvia Leeson; who are you?”

“I am Audrey Wynford,” replied Audrey, speaking more icily than ever.

“Then you are the young lady of the Castle?”

“I am Audrey Wynford.”

“How strange! One would think to meet you here, and one would think to see me here, that we both belonged to Shakespeare’s old play As You Like It. But I must not stay another minute. It is so sweet of your father to invite us all, and if I am not quick I shall lose the fun.”

She nodded with a flash of bright eyes and white teeth at the amazed Audrey, and the next moment was lost to view.

“What a girl!” thought Audrey as she pursued her walk. “How dared she! She did not treat me with one scrap of respect, and she seemed to think—a girl of that sort!—that she was my equal; she absolutely spoke of us in the same breath. It was almost insulting. Sylvia and Audrey! We meet in a wood, and we might be characters out of As You Like It. Well, she is awfully pretty, but—— Oh dear! what a creature she is when all is said and done—that wild dress, and those dancing eyes, and that free manner! And yet—and yet she was scarcely vulgar; she was only—only different from anybody else. Who is she, and where does she come from? Sylvia Leeson. Rather a pretty name; and certainly a pretty girl. But to think of her partaking of hospitality—all alone, too—with the canaille of Wynford!”

Audrey met her governess at the lodge gates, and the two plunged down a side-path, and were soon making for the wonderful moors about a mile away from Wynford Castle.

“What are you thinking about, Audrey?” said Miss Sinclair.

“Do you happen to know,” said Audrey, “any people in the village or neighborhood of the name of Leeson?”

“No, dear, certainly not. I do not think any people of the name live here. Why do you ask?”

“For such a funny reason!” replied Audrey. “I met a girl who had come by mistake through the shrubberies. She was on her way to the Castle to get a good meal. She told me her name was Sylvia Leeson. She was pretty in an outré sort of style; she was also very free. She had the cheek to compare herself with me, and said that as my name was Audrey and hers Sylvia we ought to be two of Shakespeare’s heroines. There was something uncommon about her. Not that I liked her—very far from that. But I wonder who she is.”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Sinclair. “I certainly have not the least idea that there is any one of that name living in our neighborhood, but one can never tell.”

“Oh, but you know everybody round here,” said Audrey. “Perhaps she is a stranger. I think on the whole I am glad.”

“I heard a week ago that some people had taken The Priory,” said Miss Sinclair.

“The Priory!” cried Audrey. “It has been uninhabited ever since I can remember.”

“I heard the rumor,” continued Miss Sinclair, “but I know no particulars, and it may not be true. It is just possible that this girl belongs to them.”

“I should like to find out,” replied Audrey. “She certainly interested me although——Oh, well, don’t let us talk of her any more. Jenny dear”—Audrey in affectionate moments called her governess by her Christian name—“are you not anxious to know what Evelyn is like?”

“I suppose I am,” replied Miss Sinclair.

“I think of her so much!” continued Audrey. “It seems so odd that she, a stranger, should be the heiress, and I, who have lived here all my days, should inherit nothing. Oh, of course, I shall have plenty of money, for mother had such a lot; but it does seem so unaccountable that all father’s property should go to Evelyn. And now she is to live here, and of course take the precedence of me, I do not know that I quite like it. Sometimes I feel that she will rub me the wrong way; if she is very masterful, for instance. She can be—can’t she, Jenny?”

“But why should we suppose that she will be?” replied Miss Sinclair. “There is no good in getting prejudiced beforehand.”

“I cannot help thinking about it,” said Audrey. “You know I have never had any close companions before, and although you make up for everybody else, and I love you with all my heart and soul, yet it is somewhat exciting to think of a girl just my own age coming to live with me.”

“Of course, dear; and I am so glad for your sake!”

“But then,” continued Audrey, “she does not come quite as an ordinary guest; she comes to the home which is to be hers hereafter. I wonder what her ideas are, and what she will feel about things. It is very mysterious. I am excited; I own it. You may be quite sure, though, that I shall not show any of my excitement when Evelyn does come. Jenny, have you pictured her yet to yourself? Do you think she is tall or short, or pretty or ugly, or what?”

“I have thought of her, of course,” replied Miss Sinclair; “but I have not formed the least idea. You will soon know, Audrey; she is to arrive in time for dinner.”

“Yes,” said Audrey; “mother is going in the carriage to meet her, and the train is due at six-thirty. She will arrive at the Castle a little before seven. Mother says she will probably bring a maid, and perhaps a French governess. Mother does not know herself what sort she is. It is odd her having lived away from England all this time.”

Audrey chatted on with her governess a little longer, and presently they turned and went back to the house. The sun had already set, and the big front-door was shut; the family never used it except on this special day or when a wedding or a funeral left Wynford Castle. The pretty side-door, with its sheltered porch, was the mode of exit and ingress for the inhabitants of Wynford Castle. Audrey and her governess now entered, and Audrey stood for a few moments to warm her hands by the huge log fire on the hearth. Miss Sinclair went slowly up-stairs to her room; and Audrey, finding herself alone, gave a quick sigh.

“I wonder—I do wonder,” she said half-aloud.

Her words were evidently heard, for some one stirred, and presently a tall man with a slight stoop came forward and stood where the light of the big fire fell all over him.

“Why, dad!” cried Audrey as she put her hand inside her father’s arm. “Were you asleep?” she asked. “How was it that Miss Sinclair and I did not see you when we came in?”

“I was sound asleep in that big chair. I was somewhat tired. I had received three hundred guests; don’t forget that,” replied Squire Wynford.

“And they have gone. What a comfort!” said Audrey.

“My dear little Audrey, I have fed them and warmed them and sent them on their way rejoicing, and I am a more popular Squire Wynford of Castle Wynford than ever. Why should you grumble because your neighbors, every mother’s son of them, had as much to eat and drink as they could desire on New Year’s Day?”

“I hate the custom,” said Audrey. “It belongs to the Middle Ages; it ought to be exploded.”

“What! and allow the people to go hungry?”

“Those who are likely to go hungry,” continued Audrey, “might have money given to them. We do not want all the small squires everywhere round to come and feed at the Castle.”

“But the small squires like it, and so do the poor people, and so do I,” said Squire Wynford; and now he frowned very slightly, and Audrey gave another sigh.

“We must agree to differ, dad,” she said.

“I am afraid so, my dear. Well, and how are you, my pet? I have not seen you until now. Very happy at the thought of your cousin’s arrival?”

“No, dad, scarcely happy, but excited all the same. Are not you a little, wee bit excited too, father? It seems so strange her coming all the way from Tasmania to take possession of her estates. I wonder—I do wonder—what she will be like.”

“She takes possession of no estates while I live,” said the Squire, “but she is the next heiress.”

“And you are sorry it is not I; are you not, father?”

“I don’t think of it,” said the Squire. “No,” he added thoughtfully a moment later, “that is not the case. I do think of it. You are better off without the responsibility; you would never be suited to a great estate of this sort. Evelyn may be different. Anyhow, when the time comes it is her appointed work. Now, my dear”—he took out his watch—“your cousin will arrive in a moment. Your mother has gone to meet her. Do you intend to welcome her here or in one of the sitting-rooms?”

“I will stay in the hall, of course,” said Audrey a little fretfully.

“I will leave you, then, my love. I have neglected a sheaf of correspondence, and would like to look through my letters before dinner.”

The Squire moved away, walking slowly. He pushed aside some heavy curtains and vanished. Audrey still stood by the fire. Presently a restless fit seized her, and she too flitted up the winding white marble stairs and disappeared down a long corridor. She entered a pretty room daintily furnished in blue and silver. A large log fire burned in the grate; electric light shed its soft gleams over the furniture; there was a bouquet of flowers and a little pot of ivy on a small table, also a bookcase full of gaily-bound story-books. Nothing had been neglected, even to the big old Bible and the old-fashioned prayer-book.

“I wonder how she will like it,” thought Audrey. “This is one of the prettiest rooms in the house. Mother said she must have it. I wonder if she will like it, and if I shall like her. Oh, and here is her dressing-room, and here is a little boudoir where she may sit and amuse herself and shut us out if she chooses. Lucky Evelyn! How strange it all seems! For the first time I begin to appreciate my darling, beloved home. Why should it pass away from me to her? Oh, of course I am not jealous; I would not be mean enough to entertain feelings of that sort, and—— I hear the sound of wheels. She is coming; in a moment I shall see her. Oh, I do wonder—I do wonder! I wish Jenny were with me; I feel quite nervous.”

Audrey dashed out of the room, rushed down the winding stairs, and had just entered the hall when a footman pushed aside the heavy curtains, and Lady Frances Wynford, a handsome, stately-looking woman, entered, accompanied by a small girl.

The girl was dragging in a great pile of rugs and wraps. Her hat was askew on her head, her jacket untidy. She flung the rugs down in the center of a rich Turkey carpet; said, “There, that is a relief;” and then looked full at Audrey.

Audrey was a head and shoulders taller than the heiress, who had thin and somewhat wispy flaxen hair, and a white face with insignificant features. Her eyes, however, were steady, brown, large, and intelligent. She came up to Audrey at once.

“Don’t introduce me, please, Aunt Frances,” she said. “I know this is Audrey.—I am Evelyn. You hate me, don’t you?”

“No, I am sure I do not,” said Audrey.

“Well, I should if I were you. It would be much more interesting to be hated. So this is the place. It looks jolly, does it not? Aunt Frances, do you know where my maid is? I must have her—I must have her at once. Please tell Jasper to come here,” continued the girl, turning to a man-servant who lingered in the background.

“Desire Miss Wynford’s maid to come into the hall,” said Lady Frances in an imperious tone; “and bring tea, Davis. Be quick.”

The man withdrew, and Evelyn, lifting her hand, took off her ugly felt hat and flung it on the pile of rugs and cushions.

“Don’t touch them, please,” she said as Audrey advanced. “That is Jasper’s work.—By the way, Aunt Frances, may Jasper sleep in my room? I have never slept alone, not since I was born, and I could not survive it. I want a little bed just the ditto of my own for Jasper. I cannot live without Jasper. May she sleep close to me, please, Aunt Frances? And, oh! I do hope and trust this house is not haunted. It does look eerie. I am terrified at the thought of ghosts. I know I shall not be a very pleasant inmate, and I am sorry for you all—and for you in special, Audrey. What a grand, keep-your-distance sort of air you have! But I am not going to be afraid of you. I do not forget that the place will belong to me some day. Hullo, Jasper!”

Evelyn flitted in a curious, elf-like way across the hall, and went up to a dark woman who stood just by the velvet curtain.

“Don’t be shy, Jasper,” she said. “You have nothing to be afraid of here. It is all very grand, I know; but then it is to be mine some day, and you are never to leave me—never. I was speaking to my aunt, Lady Frances, and you are to have your little bed near mine. See that it is arranged for to-night. And now, please, pick up these rugs and cushions and my old hat, and take them to my room. Don’t stare so, Jasper; do what I tell you.”

Jasper somewhat sullenly obeyed. She was as graceful and deft in all her actions as Evelyn was the reverse. Evelyn stood and watched her. When she went slowly up the marble stairs, the heiress turned with a laugh to her two companions.

“How you stare!” she said; and she looked full at Audrey. “Do you regard me as barbarian, or a wild beast, or what?”

“I am interested in you,” said Audrey in her low voice. “You are decidedly out of the common.”

“Come,” said Lady Frances, “we have no time for analyzing character just now. Audrey, take your cousin to her room, and then go yourself and get dressed for dinner.”

“Will you come, Evelyn?” said Audrey.

She crossed the hall, Evelyn following her slowly. Once or twice the heiress stopped to examine a mailed figure in armor, or an old picture on which the firelight cast a fitful gleam. She said, “How ugly! A queer old thing, that!” to the figure in armor, and she scowled up at the picture.

“You are not going to frighten me, you old scarecrow,” she said; and then she ran up-stairs by Audrey’s side.

“So this is what they call English grandeur!” she remarked. “Is not this house centuries old?”

“Parts of the house are,” answered Audrey.

“Is this part?”

“No; the hall and staircase were added about seventy years ago.”

“Is my room in the old part or the new part?”

“Your room is in what is called the medium part. It is a lovely room; you will be charmed with it.”

“I by no means know that I shall. But show it to me.”

Audrey walked a little quicker. She began to feel a curious sense of irritation, and knew that there was something about Evelyn which might under certain conditions try her temper very much. They reached the lovely blue-and-silver room, and Audrey flung open the door, expecting a cry of delight from Evelyn. But the heiress was not one to give herself away; she cast cool and critical eyes round the chamber.

“Dear, dear!” she said—“dear, dear! So this is your idea of an English bedroom!”

“It is an English bedroom; there is no idea about it,” said Audrey.

“You are cross, are you not, Audrey?” was Evelyn’s remark. “It is very trying for you my coming here. I know that, of course; Jasper has told me. I should be ignorant and quite lost were it not for Jasper, but Jasper puts me up to things. I do not think I could live without her. She has often described you—often and often. It would make you scream to listen to her. She has taken you off splendidly. Really, all things considered, you are very like what she has pictured you. I say, Audrey, would you like to come up here after your next meal, whatever you call it, and watch Jasper as she takes you off? She is the most splendid mimic in all the world. In a day or two she will be able to imitate Aunt Frances and every one in the house. Oh, it is killing to watch her and to listen to her! You would like to see yourself through Jasper’s eyes, would you not, Audrey?”

“No, thank you,” replied Audrey.

“How you kill me with that ‘No, thank you,’ of yours! Why, they are the very words Jasper said you would be certain to say. Oh dear! this is quite amusing.” Evelyn laughed long and loud, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief as she did so. “Oh dear! oh dear!” she said. “Don’t look any crosser, Audrey, or I shall die with laughing! Why, you will make me scream.”

“That would be bad for you after your journey,” said Audrey. “I see you have hot water, and your maid is in the dressing-room. I will leave you now. That is the dressing-bell; the bell for dinner will ring in half an hour. I must go and dress.”

Audrey rushed out of the room, very nearly, but not quite, banging the door after her.

“If I stayed another moment I should lose my temper. I should say something terrible,” thought the girl. Her heart was beating fast; she pressed her hand to her side. “If it were not for Jenny I do not believe I could endure the house with that girl,” was her next ejaculation. “To think that she is a Wynford, and that the Castle—the lovely, beautiful Castle—is to belong to her some day. Oh, it is maddening! Our darling knight in armor—Sir Galahad I have always called him—and our Rembrandt: one is a scarecrow, and the other a queer old thing. Oh Evelyn, you are almost past bearing!”

Audrey ran away to her room, where her maid, Eleanor, was waiting to attend on her. Audrey was never in the habit of confiding in her maid; and the girl, who was brimful of importance, curiosity, and news, did not dare to express any of her feelings to Miss Audrey in her present mood.

“Put on my very prettiest frock to-night, please, Eleanor,” said the young lady. “Dress my hair to the best advantage. My white dress, did you say? No, not white, but that pale, very pale, rose-colored silk with all the little trimmings and flounces.”

“But that is one of your gayest dresses, Miss Audrey.”

“Never mind; I choose to look gay and well dressed.”

The girl proceeded with her young mistress’s toilet, and a minute or two before the second bell rang Audrey was ready. She made a lovely and graceful picture as she looked at herself for a moment in the long mirror. Her figure was already beautifully formed; she was tall, graceful, dignified. The set of her young head on her stately neck was superb. Her white shoulders gleamed under the transparent folds of her lovely frock. Her rounded arms were white as alabaster. She slipped a small diamond ring on one of her fingers, looked for a moment longingly at a pearl necklace, but finally decided not to wear any more adornment, and ran lightly down-stairs.

The big drawing-room was lit with the softest light. The Squire stood by the hearth, on which a huge log blazed. Lady Frances, in full evening-dress, was carelessly turning the leaves of a novel.

“What a quiet evening we are likely to have!” she said, looking up at the Squire as she spoke. “To-morrow there are numbers of guests coming; we shall be a big party, and Audrey and Evelyn will, I trust, have a pleasant time.—My dear Audrey, why that dress this evening?”

“I took a fancy to wear it, mother,” said Audrey in a light tone.

There was more color than usual in her cheeks, and her eyes were brighter than her mother had ever seen them. Lady Frances was not a woman of any special discernment. She was an excellent mother and a splendid hostess. She was good to look at, and was just the sort of grande dame to keep up all the dignity of Wynford Castle, but she never even pretended to understand her only child. The Squire, a sensitive man in many ways, was also more or less a stranger to Audrey’s real character. He looked at her, it is true, a little anxiously now, and a slight curiosity stirred his breast as to the possible effect Evelyn’s presence in the house might have on his beautiful young daughter. As to Evelyn herself, he had not seen her, and did not even care to inquire of his wife what sort of girl she was. He was deeply absorbed over the silver currency question, and was writing an exhaustive paper on it for the Nineteenth Century; he had not time, therefore, to worry about domestic matters. Just then the drawing-room door was flung open, and the footman announced, as though she were a stranger:

“Miss Evelyn Wynford.”

If Audrey was, according to Lady Frances’s ideas, slightly overdressed for so small a party, she was quite outshone by Evelyn, whose dress was altogether unsuitable for her age. She wore a very thick silk, bright blue in color, with a quantity of colored embroidery thrown over it. Her little fat neck was bare, and her sleeves were short. Her scanty fair hair was arranged on the top of her head, two diamond pins supporting it in position; a diamond necklace was clasped round her neck, and she had bracelets on her arms. She was evidently intensely pleased with herself, and looked with the utmost confidence from Lady Frances to her uncle. With a couple of long strides the Squire advanced to meet her. He looked into her queer little face and all his indifference vanished. She was his only brother’s only child. He had loved his brother better than any one on earth, and, come what might, he would give that brother’s child a welcome. So he took both of Evelyn’s tiny hands, and suddenly stooping, he lifted her an inch or so from the ground and kissed her twice. Something in his manner made the little girl give a sort of gasp.

“Why, it is just as if you were father come to life,” she said. “I am glad to see you, Uncle Ned.”

Still holding her hand, the Squire walked up to the hearth and stood there facing Audrey and his wife.

“You have been introduced to Audrey, have you not, Evelyn?” he said.

“I did not need to be introduced. I saw a girl in the hall, and I guessed it must be Audrey. ’Cute of me, was it not? Do you know, Uncle Ned, I don’t much like this place, but I like you. Yes, I am right-down smitten with you, but I don’t think I like anything else. You don’t mind if I am frank, Uncle Ned; it always was my way. We are brought up like that in Tasmania—Audrey, don’t frown at me; you don’t look pretty when you frown. But, oh! I say, the bell has gone, has it not?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Lady Frances.

“And it means dinner, does it not?”

“Certainly, Evelyn,” said her uncle, bending towards her with the most polished and stately grace. “Allow me, my niece, to conduct you to the dining-room.”

“How droll you are, uncle!” said Evelyn. “But I like you all the same. You are a right-down good old sort. I am awfully peckish; I shall be glad of a round meal.”

Eighteen years before the date of this story, two brothers had parted with angry words. They were both in love with the same woman, and the younger brother had won. The elder brother, only one year his senior, could not stand defeat.

“I cannot stay in the old place,” he said. “You can occupy the Castle during my absence.”

To this arrangement Edward Wynford agreed.

“Where are you going?” he said to his brother Frank.

“To the other side of the world—Australia probably. I don’t know when I shall return. It does not much matter. I shall never marry. The estate will be yours. If Lady Frances has a son, it will belong to him.”

“You must not think of that,” said Edward. “I will live at the Castle for a few years in order to keep it warm for you, but you will come back; you will get over this. If she had loved you, old man, do you think I would have taken her from you? But she chose me from the very first.”

“I don’t blame you, Ned,” said Frank. “You are as innocent of any intention of harm to me as the unborn babe, but I love her too well to stay in the old country. I am off. I don’t want her ever to know. You will promise me, won’t you, that you will never tell her why I have skulked off and dropped my responsibilities on to your shoulders? Promise me that, at least, will you not?”

Edward Wynford promised his brother, and the brother went away.

In the former generation father and son had agreed to break off the entail, and although there was no intention of carrying this action into effect, and Frank, as eldest son, inherited the great estates of Wynford Castle, yet at his father’s death he was in the position of one who could leave the estates to any one he pleased.

During his last interview with his brother he said to him distinctly:

“Remember, if Lady Frances has a son I wish him to be, after yourself, the next heir to the property.”

“But if she has not a son?” said Edward.

“In that case I have nothing to say. It is most unlikely that I shall marry. The property will come to you in the ordinary way, and as the entail is out off, you can leave it to whom you please.”

“Do not forget that at present you can leave the estate and the Castle to whomever you please, even to an utter stranger,” said Edward, with a slight smile.

To this remark Frank made no answer. The next day the brothers parted—as it turned out, for life. Edward married Lady Frances, and they went to live at Wynford Castle. Edward heard once from Frank during the voyage, and then not at all, until he received a letter which must have been written a couple of months before his brother’s death. It was forwarded to him in a strange hand, and was full of extraordinary and painful tidings. Frank Wynford had died suddenly of acute fever, but before his death he had arranged all his affairs. His letter ran as follows:

“My dear Edward,—If I live you will never get this letter; if I die it reaches you all in good time. When last we parted I told you I should never marry. So much for man’s proposals. When I got to Tasmania I went on a ranch, and now I am the husband of the farmer’s daughter. Her name is Isabel. She is a handsome woman, and the mother of a daughter. Why I married her I can not tell you, except that I can honestly say it was not with any sense of affection. But she is my wife, and the mother of a little baby girl. Edward, when I last heard from you, you told me that you also had a daughter. If a son follows all in due course, what I have to say will not much signify; but if you have no son I should wish the estates eventually to come to my little girl. I do not believe in a woman’s administration of large and important estates like mine, but what I say to myself now is, as well my girl as your girl. Therefore, Edward, my dear brother, I leave all my estates to you for your lifetime, and at your death all the property which came to me by my father’s will goes to my little girl, to be hers when you are no longer there. I want you to receive my daughter, and to ask your wife to bring her up. I want her to have all the advantages that a home with Lady Frances must confer on her. I want my child and your child to be friends. I do no injustice to your daughter, Edward, when I make my will, for she inherits money on her mother’s side. I will acquaint my wife with particulars of this letter, and in case I catch the fever which is raging here now she will know how to act. My lawyer in Hobart Town will forward this, and see that my will is carried into effect. There is a provision in it for the maintenance of my daughter until she joins you at Castle Wynford. Whenever that event takes place she is your care. I have only one thing to add. The child might go to you at once (I have a premonition that I am about to die very soon), and thus never know that she had an Australian mother, but the difficulty lies in the fact that the mother loves the child and will scarcely be induced to part with her. You must not receive my poor wife unless indeed a radical change takes place in her; and although I have begged of her to give up the child, I doubt if she will do it. I cannot add any more, for time presses. My will is legal in every respect, and there will be no difficulty in carrying it into effect.”

This strange letter was discovered by Frank Wynford’s widow a month after his death. It was sealed and directed to his brother in England. She longed to read it, but restrained herself. She sent it on to her husband’s lawyer in Hobart Town, and in due course it arrived at Castle Wynford, causing a great deal of consternation and distress both in the minds of the Squire and Lady Frances.

Edward immediately went out to Tasmania. He saw the little baby who was all that was left of his brother, and he also saw that brother’s wife. The coarse, loud-voiced woman received him with almost abuse. What was to be done? The mother refused to part with the child, and Edward Wynford, for his own wife’s sake and his own baby daughter’s sake, could not urge her to come to Castle Wynford.

“I do not care twopence,” she remarked, “whether the child has grand relations or not. I loved her father, and I love her. She is my child, and so she has got to put up with me. As long as I live she stays with me here. I am accustomed to ranch life, and she will get accustomed to it too. I will not spare money on her, for there is plenty, and she will be a very rich woman some day. But while I live she stays with me; the only way out of it is, that you ask me to your fine place in England. Even if you do, I don’t think I should be bothered to go to you, but you might have the civility to ask me.”

Squire Wynford went away, however, without giving this invitation. He spoke to his wife on the subject. In that conversation he was careful to adhere to his brother’s wish not to reveal to her that that brother’s deep affection for herself had been the cause of his banishment. Lady Frances was an intensely just and upright woman. She had gone through a very bad quarter of an hour when she was told that her little girl was to be supplanted by the strange child of an objectionable mother, but she quickly recovered herself.

“I will not allow jealousy to enter into my life,” she said; and she even went the length of writing herself to Mrs. Wynford in Tasmania, and invited her with the baby to come and stay at Wynford Castle. Mrs. Wynford in Tasmania, however, much to the relief of the good folks at home, declined the invitation.

“I have no taste for English grandeur,” she said. “I was brought up in a wild state, and I would rather stay as I was reared. The child is well; you can have her when she is grown up or when I am dead.”

Years passed after this letter and there was no communication between little Evelyn Wynford, in the wilds of Tasmania, and her rich and stately relatives at Castle Wynford. Lady Frances fervently hoped that God would give her a son, but this hope was not to be realized. Audrey was her only child, and soon it seemed almost like a dim, forgotten fact that the real heiress was in Tasmania, and that Audrey had no more to do in the future with the stately home of her ancestors than she would have had had she possessed a brother. But when she was sixteen there suddenly came a change. Mrs. Wynford died suddenly. There was now no reason why Evelyn should not come home, and accordingly, untutored, uncared for, a passionate child with a curious, wilful strain in her, she arrived on New Year’s Day at Castle Wynford.

Evelyn Wynford’s nature was very complex. She loved very few people, but those she did love she loved forever. No change, no absence, no circumstances could alter her regard. In her ranch life and during her baby days she had clung to her mother. Mrs. Wynford was fierce and passionate and wilful. Little Evelyn admired her, whatever she did. She trotted round the farm after her; she learnt to ride almost as soon as she could walk, and she followed her mother barebacked on the wildest horses on the ranch. She was fearless and stubborn, and gave way to terrible fits of passion, but with her mother she was gentle as a lamb. Mrs. Wynford was fond of the child in the careless, selfish, and yet fierce way which belonged to her nature. Mrs. Wynford’s sole idea of affection was that her child should be with her morning, noon, and night; that for no education, for no advantages, should she be parted from her mother for a moment. Night after night the two slept in each other’s arms; day after day they were together. The farmer’s daughter was a very strong woman, and as her father died a year or two after her husband, she managed the ranch herself, keeping everything in order, and not allowing the slightest insubordination on the part of her servants. Little Evelyn, too, learnt her mother’s masterful ways. She could reprimand; she could insist upon obedience; she could shake her tiny fists in the faces of those who dared to oppose her; and when she was disporting herself so Mrs. Wynford stood by and laughed.

“Hullo!” she used to cry. “See the spirit in the young un. She takes after me. A nice time her English relatives will have with her! But she will never go to them—never while I live.”

Although Mrs. Wynford had long ago made up her mind that Evelyn was to have none of the immediate advantages of her birth and future prospects, she was fond of talking to the child about the grandeur which lay before her.

“If I die, Eve,” she said, “you will have to go across the sea in a big ship to England. You would have a rough time of it, perhaps, on board, but you won’t mind that, my beauty.”

“I am not a beauty, mother,” answered Evelyn. “You know I am not. You know I am a very plain girl.”

“Hark to the child!” shrieked Mrs. Wynford. “It is as good as a play to hear her. If you are not beautiful in body, my darling, you are beautiful in your spirit. Yes, you have inherited from your proud English father lots of gold and a lovely castle, and all your relations will have to eat humble-pie to you; but you have got your spirit from me, Eve—don’t forget that.”

“Tell me about the Castle, mother, and about my father,” said Evelyn, nestling up close to her parent, as they sat by the roaring fire in the winter evenings.

Mrs. Wynford knew very little, and what she did know she exaggerated. She gave Evelyn vivid pictures, however, in each and all of which the principal figure was Evelyn herself—Evelyn claiming her rights, mastering her relations, letting her unknown cousin know that she, Evelyn, was the heiress, and that the cousin was nobody. Only one person in the group of Evelyn’s future relations did Mrs. Wynford counsel her to be civil to.

“The worst of it all is this, Eve,” she said—“while your uncle lives you do not own a pennypiece of the estate; and he may hold out for many a long day, so you had best be agreeable to him. Besides, he is like your father. Your father was a very handsome man and a very fine man, and I loved him, child. I took a fancy to him from the day he arrived at the ranch, and when he asked me to marry him I thought myself in rare good luck. But he died soon after you were born. Had he lived I’d have been the lady of the Castle, but I’d not go there without him, and you shall never go while I live.”

“I don’t want to, mother. You are more to me than twenty castles,” said the enthusiastic little girl.

Mrs. Wynford had one friend whom Evelyn tolerated and presently loved. That friend was a woman, partly of French extraction, who had come to stay at the ranch once during a severe illness of its owner. Her name was Jasper—Amelia Jasper; but she was known on the ranch by the title of Jasper alone. She was not a lady in any sense of the word, and did not pretend that she was one; but she was possessed of a certain strange fascination which she could exercise at will over those with whom she came in contact, and she made herself so useful to Mrs. Wynford and so necessary to Evelyn that she was never allowed to leave the ranch again. She soon obtained a great power over the curious, uneducated woman who was Evelyn’s mother; and when at last Mrs. Wynford found that she was smitten with an incurable disease, and that at any moment death would come to fetch her, she asked her dear friend Jasper to take the child to England.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Jasper. “I’ll take Evelyn to England, and stay with her there.”

Mrs. Wynford laughed.

“You are clever enough, Jasper,” she said; “but what a figure of fun you would look in the grand sort of imperial residence that my dear late husband has described to me! You are not a lady, you know, although you are smart and clever enough to beat half the ladies out of existence.”

“I shall know how to manage,” said Jasper. “I, too, have heard of the ways of English grandees. I’ll be Evelyn’s maid. She cannot do without a maid, can she? I’ll take Evelyn back, and I will stay with her as her maid.”

Mrs. Wynford hailed this idea as a splendid one, and she even wrote a very badly spelt letter to Lady Frances, which Jasper was to convey and deliver herself, if possible, to her proud ladyship, as the widow called her sister-in-law. In this letter Mrs. Wynford demanded that Jasper was to stay with Evelyn as long as Evelyn wished for her, and she finally added:

“I dare you, Lady Frances, fine lady as you are, to part the child from her maid.”

When Mrs. Wynford died Evelyn gave way to the most terrible grief. She refused to eat; she refused to leave her mother’s dead body. She shrieked herself into hysterics on the day of the funeral, and then the poor little girl was prostrated with nervous fever. Finally, she became so unwell that it was impossible for her to travel to England for some months. And so it happened that nearly a year elapsed between the death of the mother and the arrival of the child at Castle Wynford.