don, when a kind fate had brought her again in touch with her
brother-in-law after so many years, Mrs. Stewart had done a vast deal of
thinking and planning. There was beautiful Severndale without a mistress
excepting Peggy, a mere child, who, in Madam's estimation, did not
count. Neil Stewart was a widower in the very prime of life and, from
all Madam had observed, sorely in need of someone to look after him and
keep him from making some foolish marriage which might end in--well, in
_not_ keeping Severndale in the family; "the family" being strongly in
evidence in Mrs. Peyton. Her first step had been to secure an invitation
to visit there. That done, the next was to remain there indefinitely
once she arrived upon the scene. To do this she must make herself not
only desirable but indispensable.

Certainly, the preceding two days had not promised much for the
fulfillment of her plan. So being by no means a fool, but on the
contrary, a very clever woman in her own peculiar line of cleverness,
she at once set about dispelling the cloud which hung over the horizon,
congratulating herself that she had had sufficient experience to know
how to deal with a girl of Peggy's age. So to that end she now smiled
sweetly upon her niece and remarked:

"I am afraid, dear, I almost lost control of myself. I am so attached to
Toinette that I am quite overcome if any harm threatens her. You know
she has been my inseparable companion in my loneliness, and when one is
so utterly desolate as I have been for so many years even the devotion
of a dumb animal is valued. I have been very, very lonely since your
uncle's death, Peggy, dear, and you can hardly understand what a
paradise seems opening to me in this month to be spent with you. I know
we are going to be everything to each other, and I am sure I can relieve
you of a thousand burdens which must be a great tax upon a girl of your
years. I do not see _how_ you have carried them so wonderfully, or why
you are not old before your time. It has been most unnatural. But now we
must change all that. Young people were not born to assume heavy
responsibilities, whereas older ones accept them as a matter of course.
And that's just what _I_ have come way down here to try to do for my
sweet niece," ended Mrs. Stewart smiling with would-be fascinating
coyness. The smile would have been somewhat less complacent could she
have heard old Jerome's comment as he placed upon the pantry shelf the
fingerbowls