y
mane of hair, watched the priestess of art with great interest. How
could Antonia imprison a sunbeam? It sounded interesting! Nell blinked
her eyes and looked at her solemnly.

"Well, child," said Antonia, pausing in her work, and giving her one of
her slow glances, "I'm glad you're better; I never heard such
distressing sobs. It's a great pity for you to cry so much, for you
disfigure yourself; but I wish now that you are here you'd sit still,
for I'd like to sketch you with that woebegone look. I never saw such a
perfect ideal of true artistic beauty before."

"Beauty?" said Nell, with a little laugh. "But I'm called 'the ugly
duckling'!"

"Charming!" exclaimed Antonia. "I'll immortalise this 'ugly duckling.'
She shall be the foreground for these pine trees, and the imprisoned
sunbeams can light her up from behind."

Notwithstanding her sorrow, Nell found it intensely interesting to be
made the foreground of a picture. She wondered how the imprisoned
sunbeams would like their office of always shining round her head. Nell
was by no means vain. She honestly believed herself to be a hideous
little girl, but it was refreshing once, as a change, to be spoken of as
a true artistic beauty. She thought that she would learn the phrase, and
repeat it over when she looked at herself in the glass, or when Kitty
and Harry became more than usually aggravating about her personal
appearance.

Meanwhile, the artist dashed in her colours with fiery speed. Nell sat
perfectly still, and gazed straight at Antonia. Suddenly a flood of
colour spread itself all over her face. Was Antonia the new owner of the
Towers? If so, _she_ was the cause of poor Nell's heart-broken sobs.

The younger members of the Lorrimer household had solemnly vowed an
undying feud against the new owner of the Towers. They had established
this feud with the solemnity of a sacred rite. They had made a bonfire
and stood round it in a circle and joined hands, and declared the
following awful formula:--

"Neither I, nor my children, nor my grandchildren, nor any of my
descendants, will ever speak a friendly word to the new owner of my
ancestral home. I wish the ghost of my ancestor, Hugh Lorrimer, who died
in the Wars of the Roses, to haunt the new owner and his family; and I
solemnly declare that I never will have part or lot with him or his."

This jargon had been made up by Harry, but each member of the feud, as
they termed themselves, had solemnly repeate