ns
behind her chair and the stately portraits looking down from the walls.

She looked now as if she might be the original of one of these old
portraits herself, as she sat there in the high-backed chair, with the
griffins carved on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed around her
in graceful folds. There was a soft fall of lace at wrists and throat,
and her white hair had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
which the chair was upholstered.

With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight into her confidence,
she held out her hand and drew her to a seat beside her. An
old-fashioned silver tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself in filling a cup for
Betty.

"There!" she said, as she passed it to her. "There's nothing like a cozy
chat over a cup of tea for warming acquaintances into friends."

Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of lemon, if Madam began
all her interviews in this way, and if she was to hear the same little
sermon about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty had heard. It
certainly was an interesting crest. She lifted the fragile bit of china
for a closer survey. A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped a
spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I keep tryst."

[Illustration: "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS
LESSON"]

But Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson. At
first it was about a quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she mentioned that, it was as
if they had discovered a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully
that she had been there, and had spent a long rainy afternoon in one of
its rooms, where Scott had written many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty
remembered afterward that not a word was said about school and its
obligations. It was of the Old Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House
of Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the autographs of Dickens
and Hawthorne, which she had in her collection, and a pen which had once
belonged to George Eliot.

Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss Alcott, and, before she
realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself down impulsively on
the stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the griffin's head
on the arm of the high-backed chair, was asking a dozen eager questions
about "Little Women" and the author who had bee