the
household at Sunnyside. In a dwelling where the master of the house was
away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and
the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon
"colour" and "atmosphere," and altogether hazy concerning the practical
necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even
half Sara's intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many
reforms.

Dick Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the
demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his
wife's incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that
sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his
home-life.

He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable
self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene
created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of
explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely
simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own
time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her
in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of
recrimination and complaint.

Sara was essentially a good "comrade," as Patrick Lovell had recognized
in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share
with her the pin-prick worries that dog a man's footsteps in this vale
of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning
Molly's ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge
that Sara was at hand.

Molly herself seemed to float through life like a big, beautiful moth,
sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but
never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders. One day, in
the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably
flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as
a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft
wings in the process.

It was of this that Sara was inwardly afraid, realizing, perhaps more
clearly than the girl's overworked and sometimes absent-minded father,
the risks attaching to her temperament.

Of late, Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very
unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat
nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matte