t has been so
tiresome and unlucky. I just wish we had never known them.'

'I wish sometimes we had never known Lady Myrtle,' said Frances. 'You
and I have _never_ been--like this--with each other before, Jass.'

'Well, we needn't quarrel about it,' said her sister. 'Let's try to keep
off the subject of the Harper family. For _I_ can do them no good.'

'Very well,' said Frances, though rather sadly. 'I wonder,' she went on
thinking to herself--'I wonder why Bessie and Margaret are perhaps to
leave school; they are getting on so well.'

She was too unpractical to guess at the truth--which Jacinth had thought
it useless to mention as a part of Miss Falmouth's information--that
their parents could no longer afford to pay for them.

'For to be gentlepeople, as they undoubtedly are in every sense of the
word,' the girl had said, 'they are really _awfully_ poor. I have heard
so from some people who know them at that place where they live. It is
quite a little seaside place, where people who want to be quiet go for
bathing in the summer. But the Harpers live there all the year round. It
must be fearfully dull.'

'Yes,' Jacinth agreed, 'it can't be lively. Still, being poor isn't the
only trouble in the world.'

'No,' Miss Falmouth replied, 'but I fear they have others too. Captain
Harper is so delicate.'

Jacinth said no more. Honor Falmouth was a kind-hearted but not
particularly thoughtful girl, and she forgot all about the Harpers in
five minutes. Her visit to Robin Redbreast had never come to pass, and
Jacinth did not very specially regret it. She liked best to be alone
with Lady Myrtle. So the relationship of the young Harpers to the old
lady had never come to Honor's knowledge, as it might perhaps have done
if her attention had been drawn to Lady Myrtle by visiting at her house.
And at Christmas Honor was leaving school.

CHAPTER X.

THE HARPERS' HOME.

Southcliff was a very dull little place, especially so in winter, of
course. In fine weather there is always a charm about the seaside, even
on the barest and least picturesque coast. There are the endless
varieties of sky panorama--the wonderful sunsets, if you are lucky
enough to face seawards to the west; the constantly changing effects of
light and colour reflected in the water itself. And on a wild or rugged
coast, winter and stormy weather bring of course their own grand though
terrible displays.

But Southcliff, despite its promising name, wa