ss Grey!"

"How delightful!" Lucy exclaimed, desisting from her occupation of
opening books and turning over music; "for you can tell us all about
Nola and her love story."

"Her love story?" Mrs. Money repeated, in tones of melancholy inquiry.

"Her love story!" Miss Blanchet murmured tremulously, and wondering who
had betrayed Minola's secret.

"Oh, yes," said Lucy decisively. "I know there's some love
story--something romantic and delightful. Do tell us, Miss Blanchet."

Even the saint-like Theresa now showed a mild and becoming interest.

"It's not exactly a love story," Miss Blanchet said with some
hesitation, not well knowing what she ought to reveal and what to keep
back. "At least it's no love affair on Minola's part. She never was in
love--never. She detests all love-making--at least she thinks so," the
poetess said with a gentle sigh. "But there was a gentleman who was
very much in love with her."

"Oh, she must have had heaps of lovers!" interposed Lucy.

Miss Blanchet then told the story of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and how he
was rich and handsome--at least rather handsome, she said--and how he
wanted to marry Minola; and her people very much wished that she would
have him, and she would not; and how at last she hastened her flight to
London to get rid of him. All this was full of delightful interest to
Lucy, and still further quickened the kindly sympathy of Mrs. Money.
Then Mary Blanchet went into a long story about the death of Minola's
mother and the second marriage of Minola's father, and then the
father's death and the stepmother's second marriage, and the discomfort
of the home which fate had thus provided for Minola. She expatiated
upon the happiness of the sheltered life Minola had had while her
mother was living, and the change that came upon her afterward, until
the only doubt Mrs. Money had ever entertained about Minola--a doubt as
to the perfect propriety and judgment of her coming to live almost
alone in London--vanished altogether, and she regarded our heroine as a
girl who had been driven from her home instead of having fled from it.

Mrs. Money delicately and cautiously approached the subject of Minola's
means of subsistence. On this point no one could enlighten her better
than Miss Blanchet, who knew to the sixpence the income and expenditure
of her friend. Well, Minola was not badly off for a girl, Mrs. Money
thought. A girl could live nicely and quietly, like a lady, but very
quie