A gleam of amused pleasure flashed across Madame Sampiero's trembling lips and wide open blue eyes: she realised that a little thought, a little trouble, would transform her god-daughter, if not into a beauty, then into a singularly distinguished and attractive-looking young woman. Like most beautiful people, Barbara Sampiero had always been generous in her appreciation of the beauty of others, and she would have been pleased indeed had Richard Rebell's daughter turned out as lovely as had been her mother,--lovely with that English beauty of golden hair and perfect colouring. But Barbara's charm, so far at least, seemed of the soul rather than of the body, and, recognising this fact, Madame Sampiero had at first felt disappointed, for her own experience--and in these matters a woman can only be guided by her own personal experience--was that in this world beauty of body counts very much more in obtaining for those who possess it their heart's desire than does beauty of soul. * * * * * The mistress of Chancton Priory had hesitated painfully before allowing Doctor McKirdy to write the letter which had bidden Barbara Rebell come to England. The old Scotchman, who to her surprise had urged Madame Sampiero to send for her god-daughter, regarded the coming of Barbara as a matter of comparatively small moment. If the experiment was not successful, well then Mrs. Rebell could be sent away again; but the mistress of the Priory knew that to herself the coming of Richard Rebell's daughter must either bring something like happiness, and the companionship for which she sometimes craved with so desperate a longing, or the destruction of the dignified peace in which she had known how to enfold herself as in a mantle. For a few days, Barbara's fate had indeed hung in the balance, and could money have taken the place of the shelter asked for, it would have been sent in ample measure. At last what had turned the balance and weighed down the scale had been a mere word said by Mrs. Turke--a word referring incautiously to James Berwick as the probable future owner of Chancton Priory. Hearing that word, the present owner's trembling lips had closed tightly together. So that was what they were all planning? That the Priory should be, in the fulness of time, handed over to James Berwick, to be added to the many possessions he had acquired by the sale of himself--Madame Sampiero, discussing the matter in the watches of her long night, did not choose and pick her words--by that of his young manhood, and of his already growing political reputation, to a sickly woman, older than himself, whose death had been the crowning boon she had bestowed on her husband.