Miss Haredale's pretty little drawing-room at Silverfold was gay with tulips and hyacinths, and bright with a cheery mingling of sun and firelight. In the sunny bay-window sat Una Haredale, with a book in her lap, but with eyes eagerly gazing down the pleasant bit of country road, shaded with tall trees and edged with broad pieces of turf and freely growing hedges, that was visible from the window. Una was now seventeen, a slender, limp creature, with languor and want of strength apparent in every gesture, and a look of extreme delicacy in her pale face and large eager eyes. Her expression had softened and sweetened, her hair was fastened up on the top of her head, though its thick coils still seemed as if they were too heavy for the long over-slender neck. As she caught sight of a figure approaching the garden gate, her face lighted up into a look of positive rapture. She sprang up, and flew out to the door. "Amethyst, Amethyst! my darling, my darling! Here you are at last I'll never, never let you go again!" The last words were spoken as she clung round her sister's neck, almost stifling Amethyst's words of greeting. "My darling, you won't let me speak, or look at you! Where's Aunt Anna,--not at home?" "She has taken Carrie to have a singing lesson. Come in; I am to give you tea, and take care of you." Soon Amethyst was sitting in a low chair by the fire, with Una kneeling at her side, leaning against her, and clinging to her, as some one had once said, like bindweed round a lily, a comparison resented by Amethyst as derogatory to Una. She alone knew what this clinging, dependent creature had been to her ever since, for Una's sake, she had tried to "make things better." "Are you quite well, dear? and do you like being here? Have you got on with Aunt Anna?" she asked, tenderly. "Oh, as well as can be without you. I do like it. Oh! I have a great deal to tell you. Only first I want to hear how everything is settled. Is the house in Eaton Square nice?" "Yes, there will be plenty of room for Auntie and Carrie Carisbrooke, and you know mother will let them be quite independent. And you are all to be there. Mother wouldn't hear of sending even Kattern and Tory to Cleverley; and as for you, she insisted on your going to the Drawing-room, and coming out regularly." "I? I should be half-killed with an hour of a London party. What can my lady want me for?" said Una, with a startled look. "She says she may never be able to give you so good a chance. I said I thought that London was bad for you, and that I was sure you could not do much. But she said that it was more amusing for you to do what you could, and she liked to have us all with her. So I must take great care of you, and we must see how it answers for you." Una gave a long sigh. "It keeps me with you," she said. "But oh, it tires me to think of it! and I shall want heaps of new clothes."