lied Frances, drying her eyes and swallowing
down her sobs. 'I don't like you to speak coldly of granny, for you did
love her in your heart, I know, dearly. Aunt Alison looks down upon her,
just because she wasn't quite--no, she _was_ quite a lady--but because
she wasn't at all grand. And there's some excuse for her, because she
didn't know her. But for us it would be _too_ horrid, when she was so
good to us, even all those years she was so suffering and feeble. And
then, for Uncle Manny's sake too.'

'There now,' said Jacinth, not sorry to turn aside the reproach which
conscience told her she had merited. 'You are saying the very thing you
blamed me for--but truly, Francie, I didn't mean anything not nice to
dear granny. I felt that Aunt Alison couldn't _understand_ what she was;
and--and--it was no use seeming to take up the cudgels for our other
relations the moment we came.'

There was something in this, and no doubt a reluctance to discuss their
grandmother with a stranger, and a prejudiced stranger, had mingled with
Jacinth's desire to propitiate her aunt. So the sisters kissed and made
friends, and when a few minutes afterwards they went down-stairs, and Mr
Denison made his appearance again, the traces of tears had all but
vanished from Frances's fair face.

The two girls had been five years in England, little Eugene three; and
during all these years, owing to exceptional circumstances and unlucky
coincidences, they had never seen their parents. Nor was there any
prospect of their doing so for three or four years to come. All this
time had been spent under the care of their mother's step-mother, Mrs
Denison, whose recent death had thrown them again, in a sense, on the
world, and the best Colonel Mildmay could arrange for them was the
somewhat unwilling guardianship of his elder sister Alison. She was an
honourable and well-meaning woman, who had found her own sphere in
active good works among the poor of Thetford. But she did not understand
or care for children, and the charge of her nieces and nephew she only
accepted as a duty.

'I will do my best,' she wrote to the parents in India, 'but I dare not
promise that it will be all you could wish. Still there are undoubtedly
advantages here, in the way of schools, and the place is healthy. I will
give what time I can to the children, but I cannot give up all my
present responsibilities and occupations. You would not expect it. I
fear the children may find my rul