he very ill?" she asked.

"No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He's in a community,
joined a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of
his days repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I've no
patience with the fool!" continued the old lady irascibly. "He marries
to please himself and then hasn't the pluck of a rabbit to see the thing
through decently. So you're to be my responsibility in future--and a
pretty big one, too, to judge by the look of you."

Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she
gathered that her father had left her--though not quite in the same way
as _petite maman_ had done--and that henceforth this autocratic old lady
with the hawk's eyes and quick, darting movements was to be the arbiter
of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella's prickly exterior,
a humanness and ability to understand which had been totally lacking in
Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.

"Will you let me dance?" she asked.

"Tchah!" snorted the old woman. "So the Wielitzska blood is coming
out after all!" She turned to Virginia. "Can she dance?" she demanded
abruptly.

"Mais oui, madame!" cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically.
"Like a veritable angel!"

"I shouldn't have thought it," commented her ladyship drily.

Her shrewd eyes swept the child's tense little face with its long,
Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its
unchildish pallor.

"Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine," muttered the old
woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: "Show me what
you can do, then, child."

"Very well." Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid
her hand lightly on Lady Arabella's knee. "Look! This is the story of
a Fairy who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one of
the Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn't show her the way
back to Fairyland. So"--abruptly--"she died."

Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence. Technique,
of course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling of the
story, was amazing. It was all there--the Fairy's first wonder and
delight in finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that she
was lost and her frantic efforts to find the way back to Fairyland.
Followed her meeting with the Mortal and supplication to him to guide
her, and finally the Fairy's despair and death. Magda's slight