nied Fay in these long scrambling
rides.

The young heiress was perfectly happy and content with her simple
secluded life; Aunt Griselda would hear the girl warbling like a lark
in her little room. Long before the inhabitants of the cottage would
be stirring Fay's little feet were accustomed to brush the dew from
the grass; Nero and she would return from their rambles in the highest
spirits; the basket of wild flowers that graced the breakfast-table
had been all gathered and arranged by Fay's pretty fingers. After
breakfast there were all her pets to visit--to feed the doves and
chickens and canaries--to give Fairy her corn, and to look after the
brindled cow and the dear little gray-and-black kitten in the
hay-loft--all the live things on the premises loved their gracious
little mistress; even Sulky, Aunt Griselda's old pony--the most
ill-conditioned and stubborn of ponies, who never altered his pace for
any degree of coaxing--would whinny with pleasure if Fay entered his
stall.

Fay was very docile with her masters and mistresses, but it is only
fair to say that her abilities were not above the average. She sipped
knowledge carelessly when it came in her way, but she never sought it
of her own accord. Neither she nor Aunt Griselda were intellectual
women. Fay played a little, sung charmingly, filled her sketchbook
with unfinished vigorous sketches, chattered a little French, and then
shut up her books triumphantly, under the notion that at sixteen a
girl's education must be finished.

It must be confessed that Miss Mordaunt was hardly the woman to be
intrusted with a girl's education. She was a gentle, shallow creature,
with narrow views of life, very prim and puritanical--orthodox, she
would have called it--and she brought up Fay in the old-fashioned way
in which she herself had been brought up. Fay never mixed with young
people; she had no companions of her own age; but people were
beginning to talk of her in the neighborhood. Fay's youth, her
prospective riches, her secluded nun-like life surrounded her with a
certain mystery of attraction. Miss Mordaunt had been much exercised
of late by the fact that one or two families in the environs of
Daintree had tried to force themselves into intimacy with the ladies
of the cottage; sundry young men, too, had made their appearance in
the little church at Daintree, as it seemed with the express intention
of staring at Fay. One of these, Frank Lumsden, had gone further--h