t utterly. You are the victim of your own
disordered imagination. Likeness, forsooth!" She laughed a bitter,
contemptuous laugh, and seemed to think that she had disposed of the
question for ever.

"Come here, child," said the Major, taking me kindly by the hand, and
leading me close up to her ladyship. "Look at her, Lady Chillington," he
added; "scan her features thoroughly, and tell me then that the likeness
of which I speak is nothing more than a figment of my own brain."

Lady Chillington drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim,
Major Strickland, which I cannot characterise as anything but
ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking
thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with a
cold, critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief and
indignation.

"Pshaw! Major Strickland, you are growing old and foolish. I cannot
perceive the faintest trace of such a likeness as you mention. Besides,
if it really did exist it would prove nothing. It would merely serve to
show that there may be certain secrets within Deepley Walls which not
even Major Strickland's well-known acumen can fathom."

"After that, of course I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said the
offended Major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me: "Good-bye,
my dear Miss Janet, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I
must intercede with Lady Chillington to grant you permission to come and
spend part of next week with us at Rose Cottage."

"Oh! take her, and welcome; I have no wish to keep her here. But you
will stop to dinner, Major, when we will talk of these things further.
And now, Miss Pest, you had better run away. You have heard too much
already."

I was glad enough to get away; so after a hasty kiss to Major
Strickland, I hurried indoors; and once in my own bed-room, I burst into
an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Chillington's
words! and her looks had been more cruel than they.

I was still weeping when Sister Agnes came into the room. She had but
just returned from Eastbury. She knelt beside me, and took me in her
arms and kissed me, and wiped away my tears. "Why was I crying?" she
asked. I told her of all that Lady Chillington had said.

"Oh! cruel, cruel of her to treat you thus!" she said. "Can nothing move
her--nothing melt that heart of adamant? But, Janet, dear, you must not
let her sharp words wound you so deeply. Would