journey to St. Petersburg, where her stepfather, who was,
as her father had been, in the Diplomatic Service, was attached to the
Embassy as First Secretary.

She had no anxiety with regard to her mother's choice, nor fortunately
did she feel any resentment that her beloved father should have been so
easily replaced in her mother's affections. She realised clearly that
Mrs. Harford, or, as we should call her now, Lady Lawson, having all
her life depended absolutely on a man's care, was lost and unhappy
without it, and she could only feel grateful that her choice had fallen
on a man entirely able to give her all she wanted, and, so far as the
future could be foretold, to make her life happy.

At all events her mother would continue in the same surroundings that
she had enjoyed for many years, and in a position which she would
undoubtedly fill to her own and every one else's satisfaction.

To be honest, Philippa, although fond of her mother, had found the last
year or two very trying. For some time after her father's death their
mutual grief and loss had drawn the two near together, but as Mrs.
Harford's powers of enjoyment and her love of excitement reasserted
themselves, Philippa had discovered that she was quite uninterested in
her mother's pleasures, and that they had very little in common.

A constant round of gaiety such as the older woman revelled in was
quite unsatisfying to her daughter. In consequence the girl was really
lonely. She had not yet found an outlet for her desire to be of some
use in the world, or to fill the void left by the loss of her father's
constant companionship.

But just at this moment she was enjoying a certain sense of freedom
which the shifting of the responsibility of her mother on to stronger
shoulders had given her. She had, owing to the circumstances I have
related, seen very little of her native country, although she had
travelled widely on the Continent and in more distant lands, and she
anticipated with keen enjoyment the visit she was about to pay to a
friend who lived in the east of England.

This friend had been a school-fellow--that is to say, she had been one
of the older girls when Philippa, a shy child of fourteen, had arrived,
unhappy and awkward, among a crowd of new faces in an unknown land.
Marion Wells, as she then was, was one of those people in whom the
motherly instinct is strong, even in youth. She had taken Philippa
under her wing, and being by no mean