no peace, because no one could rightly
curl the long flaxen tresses upon her shoulders, until the worry became
so intolerable that Honora, partly as penance, partly because she thought
the present mode neither conducive to tidiness nor comfort, took her
scissors and trimmed all the ringlets behind, bowl-dish fashion, as her
own carrots had figured all the days of her childhood.

Lucilla was held by Mrs. Stubbs during the operation. She did not cry or
scream after she felt herself conquered by main strength, but her blue
eyes gleamed with a strange, wild light; she would not speak to Miss
Charlecote all the rest of the day, and Honora doubted whether she were
ever forgiven.

Another offence was the cutting down her name into Lucy. Honor had
avoided Cilly from the first; Silly Sandbrook would be too dreadful a
sobriquet to be allowed to attach to any one, but Lucilla resented the
change more deeply than she showed. Lucy was a housemaid's name, she
said, and Honor reproved her for vanity, and called her so all the more.
She did not love Miss Charlecote well enough to say that Cilly had been
her father's name for her, and that he had loved to wind the flaxen curls
round his fingers.

Every new study, every new injunction cost a warfare, disobedience, and
passionate defiance and resistance on the one hand, and steady,
good-tempered firmness on the other, gradually growing a little stern.
The waves became weary of beating on the rock at last. The fiery child
was growing into a girl, and the calm will had the mastery of her; she
succumbed insensibly; and owing all her pleasures to Cousin Honor, she
grew to depend upon her, and mind, manners, and opinions were taking
their mould from her.

CHAPTER V

Too soon the happy child
His nook of heavenward thought must change
For life's seducing wild.--_Christian Year_

The summer sun peeped through the Venetian blinds greenly shading the
breakfast-table.

Only three sides were occupied. For more than two years past good Miss
Wells had been lying under the shade of Hiltonbury Church, taking with
her Honora Charlecote's last semblance of the dependence and deference of
her young ladyhood. The kind governess had been fondly mourned, but she
had not left her child to loneliness, for the brother and sister sat on
either side, each with a particular pet--Lucilla's, a large pointer, who
kept his nose on her knee; Owen's, a white fan-tailed pigeon, seldom long