Up to the present, however, this training had scarcely come to Miss Oliphant. She was almost without relations and she was possessed of more money than she knew what to do with. She had great abilities and loved learning for the sake of learning, but till she came to St. Benet’s, her education had been as desultory as her life. She had never been to school; her governess only taught her what she chose to learn. As a child she was very fickle in this respect, working hard from morning till night one day but idling the whole of the next. When she was fifteen her guardian took her to Rome. The next two years were spent in traveling, and Maggie, who knew nothing properly, picked up that kind of superficial miscellaneous knowledge which made her conversation brilliant and added to her many charms. “You shall be brought out early,” her guardian had said to her. “You are not educated in the stereotyped fashion, but you know enough. After you are seventeen I will get you a suitable chaperon and you shall live in London.” This scheme, however, was not carried out. For, shortly after her seventeenth birthday, Maggie Oliphant met a girl whose beauty and brilliance were equal to her own, whose nature was stronger and who had been carefully trained in heart and mind while Maggie had been neglected. Miss Lee was going through a course of training at St. Benet’s College for Women at Kingsdene. She was an uncommon girl in every sense of the word. The expression of her lovely face was as piquant as its features were beautiful; her eyes were dark as night; they also possessed the depth of the tenderest, sweetest summer night, subjugating all those who came in contact with her. Annabel Lee won Maggie’s warmest affections at once; she determined to join her friend at St. Benet’s. She spoke with ineffable scorn of her London season and resolved, with that enthusiasm which was the strongest part of her nature, to become a student in reality. Under Annabel’s guidance she took up the course of study which was necessary to enable her to pass her entrance examination. She acquitted herself well, for her abilities were of the highest order, and entered the college with _éclat._ Miss Lee was a student in Heath Hall, and Maggie thought herself supremely happy when she was given a room next to her friend.