wledged the fact by moving her head on the
pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up in bed. She always woke at
eight precisely.

Was this Mrs. Hignett _the_ Mrs. Hignett, the world-famous writer on
Theosophy, the author of "The Spreading Light," "What of the Morrow,"
and all the rest of that well-known series? I'm glad you asked me. Yes,
she was. She had come over to America on a lecturing tour.

About this time there was a good deal of suffering in the United States,
for nearly every boat that arrived from England was bringing a fresh
swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists, poets, scientists,
philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to
affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race
movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely differing views on
religion, art, politics, and almost every other subject; on this one
point the intellectuals of Great Britain were single-minded, that there
was easy money to be picked up on the lecture-platforms of America, and
that they might just as well grab it as the next person.

Mrs. Hignett had come over with the first batch of immigrants; for,
spiritual as her writings were, there was a solid streak of business
sense in this woman, and she meant to get hers while the getting was
good. She was half way across the Atlantic with a complete itinerary
booked, before ninety per cent. of the poets and philosophers had
finished sorting out their clean collars and getting their photographs
taken for the passport.

She had not left England without a pang, for departure had involved
sacrifices. More than anything else in the world she loved her charming
home, Windles, in the county of Hampshire, for so many years the seat of
the Hignett family. Windles was as the breath of life to her. Its shady
walks, its silver lake, its noble elms, the old grey stone of its
walls--these were bound up with her very being. She felt that she
belonged to Windles, and Windles to her. Unfortunately, as a matter of
cold, legal accuracy, it did not. She did but hold it in trust for her
son, Eustace, until such time as he should marry and take possession of
it himself. There were times when the thought of Eustace marrying and
bringing a strange woman to Windles chilled Mrs. Hignett to her very
marrow. Happily, her firm policy of keeping her son permanently under
her eye at home and never permitting him to have speech with a female
below the age o