hearers, while "Poor old Elsie!" cried Nan Vanburgh, laughing.
"I give her a month before I am taken for a day's hard shopping at
Maple's! She rides her hobbies so violently that they collapse of sheer
exhaustion before she has time to put them into practice!"

In the matter of conversation, Elsie swayed between the high-flown and
the natural, sometimes chatting away in ordinary commonplace fashion, at
other times confounding her hearers by weird and mysterious utterances.

"Have you ever felt the intense meaning in _colour_?" she demanded one
day, at the end of a silence during which she had been gazing into the
heart of the fire. Betty stared aghast, but Cynthia, with finer humour,
smiled demurely, and replied--

"Of blues--yes! I feel it horribly at times," whereupon, being a
Rendell, Elsie descended promptly from her high horse, and chuckled with
enjoyment.

After Elsie appeared Lilias--a vision of beauty and elegance, but far
too grown-up and superior to care for the society of chits in the
schoolroom. Her visit was a round of gaiety, for she did not care for
quiet home evenings, but she never seemed really satisfied nor pleased,
and there was always a "but" or an "if" at the end of her description of
the last day's doings.

Nan looked at her with troubled eyes, and her "Poor Lilias!" had a very
different ring from the "Poor old Elsie!" which was after all only a
pretence at pity.

Cynthia's prophecy had been fulfilled, for at the end of January Betty
had received from America a copy of the _New York Herald_, with the
significant letter "R" printed on a corner of the wrapper. Her friend
of the fog had evidently possessed himself of her full name and address
before leaving town, and now wished her to know that he had safely
reached the scene of his future labours. How carefully that wrapper was
preserved! How diligently it was searched for further messages, long
after it had been definitely concluded that no such message could exist!
Betty considered the handwriting the most manly and distinctive that
she had ever beheld; and Cynthia, without going so far, was still
prepared to read in it all the desired meanings.

"The letters are joined together; that means sequence of thought and
mental ability. The line rises at the end; that shows proper ambition.
There are power and success written in every stroke!"

"Dear Cynthia!" sighed Betty ardently. "How clever you are! You are
always right."

As fo