essed well, and had pleasing manners, and without being absolutely
handsome was sufficiently good-looking. Miss Alicia Stone was almost
penniless, and did not like to work; but she generally found herself
provided for as "sheep-dog" or chaperon in some house of her numerous
aristocratic friends. She was an amusing talker, and Margaret liked her
society well enough, but Miss Stone was too clever not to know when she
was not wanted. It soon became evident to the companion that for some
reason Margaret liked to walk in the park alone in a morning; and what
Margaret liked was law. Alicia knew how to efface herself on such
occasions, so that when Lady Caroline asked at luncheon what the two had
been doing all the morning, it was easy and natural for Miss Stone to
reply, "Oh, we have been out in the park," although this meant only that
she had been sitting at the conservatory door with a novel, while
Margaret had been wandering half a mile away. Lady Caroline used to
smile, and was satisfied.

And Margaret's conscience was very little troubled. She had never been
told, she sometimes said to herself, that she was not to speak to Mr.
Brand. And she was possessed with the fervent desire to save his soul
(and social reputation), which sometimes leads young women into follies
which they afterwards regret. He told her vaguely that he had had a
miserable, unsatisfactory sort of life, and that he wished to amend. He
did not add that his first impulses towards amendment had come from
Janetta Colwyn. Margaret thought that she was responsible for them, one
and all. And she felt it incumbent upon her to foster their growth, even
at the price of a small concealment--although it would, as she very well
knew, be a great one in her parents' eyes.

As the days went on towards summer, it seemed to Janetta as though some
interest, some brightness perhaps, had died out of her life. Her
friends--her two chief friends, to whom her vow of friendship and
service had been sworn--were, in some inexplicable manner, alienated
from her. Margaret came regularly for her singing-lesson, but never
lingered to talk as she had done at first. She seemed pensive, languid,
preoccupied. Wyvis Brand had left off calling for little Julian, except
on rare occasions. Perhaps his frequent loitering in the plantation left
him but scant time for his daily work; he always pleaded business when
his boy reproached him for his remissness, or when Janetta questioned
him some