mma's sister married Mr. Merton. He was a planter
in Barbadoes. He died about three years ago, but his widow and daughters
have lived on there. They were very poor and couldn't afford to come
home. Fanny is the eldest--I think she must be about twenty."

Diana paced up and down, with her hands behind her, wondering when her
telegram would reach her cousin, who was staying at a London
boarding-house, when she might be expected at Beechcote, how long she
could be persuaded to stay--speculations, in fact, innumerable. Her
agitation was pathetic in Mrs. Colwood's eyes. It testified to the
girl's secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties
and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance.

Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her
cousins.

"Oh, some years!" said Diana, vaguely. "I remember a letter
coming--before we went to the East--and papa reading it. I know"--she
hesitated--"I know he didn't like Mr. Merton."

She stood still a moment, thinking. The lights and shadows of reviving
memory crossed her face, and presently her thought emerged, with very
little hint to her companion of the course it had been taking out
of sight.

"Papa always thought it a horrid life for them--Aunt Merton and the
girls--especially after they gave up their estate and came to live in
the town. But how could they help it? They must have been very poor.
Fanny"--she took up the letter--"Fanny says she has come home to learn
music and French--that she may earn money by teaching when she goes
back. She doesn't write very well, does she?"

She held out the sheet.

The handwriting, indeed, was remarkably illiterate, and Mrs. Colwood
could only say that probably a girl of Miss Merton's circumstances had
had few advantages.

"But then, you see, we'll _give_ her advantages!" cried Diana, throwing
herself down at Mrs. Colwood's feet, and beginning to plan aloud.--"You
know if she will only stay with us, we can easily have people down from
London for lessons. And she can have the green bedroom--over the
dining-room--can't she?--and the library to practise in. It would be
absurd that she should stay in London, at a horrid boarding-house, when
there's Beechcote, wouldn't it?"

Mrs. Colwood agreed that Beechcote would probably be quite convenient
for Miss Merton's plans. If she felt a little pang at the thought that
her pleasant _tete-a-tete_ with her new charge was to be so soon
interrupted, a