lls me that she has taken up this Miss Douglas
enthusiastically--comes here to sing with her almost every day."

"Who is the girl?"

Miss Vanhorn prepared an especially rigid expression of countenance for
the item of relationship which she supposed would follow. But nothing
came; Helen was evidently waiting for a more dramatic occasion. She felt
herself respited; yet doubly angry and apprehensive.

When the song was ended, there was much applause of the subdued
drawing-room kind--applause, however, plainly intended for Helen alone.
Singularly enough, Miss Vanhorn resented this. "If I should take Anne,
dress her properly, and introduce her as my niece, the Lorrington would
be nowhere," she thought, angrily. It was the first germ of the idea.

It was not allowed to disappear. It grew and gathered strength slowly,
as Tante and Helen intended it should; the two friendly conspirators
never relaxed for a day their efforts concerning it. Anne remained
unconscious of these manoeuvres; but the old grandaunt was annoyed, and
urged, and flattered, and menaced forward with so much skill that it
ended in her proposing to Anne, one day in the early spring, that she
should come and spend the summer with her, the children on the island to
be provided for meanwhile by an allowance, and Anne herself to have a
second winter at the Moreau school, if she wished it, so that she might
be fitted for a higher position than otherwise she could have hoped to
attain.

"Oh, grandaunt!" cried the girl, taking the old loosely gloved hand in
hers.

"There is no occasion for shaking hands and grandaunting in that way,"
said Miss Vanhorn. "If you wish to do what I propose, do it; I am not
actuated by any new affection for you. You will take four days to
consider; at the end of that period, you may send me your answer. But,
with your acceptance, I shall require the strictest obedience. And--no
allusion whatever to your mother."

"What are to be my duties?" asked Anne, in a low voice.

"Whatever I require," answered the old woman, grimly.

At first Anne thought of consulting Tante. But she had a strong
under-current of loyalty in her nature, and the tie of blood bound her
to her grandaunt, after all: she decided to consult no one but herself.
The third day was Sunday. In the twilight she sat alone on her narrow
bed, by the window of the dormitory, thinking. It was a boisterous March
evening; the wildest month of the twelve was on his mad errands