Christina, standing by the window in Cicely's great London drawing-room, devoutly wished that somebody would come in, or that something would happen, to end this interview with her uncle, who never failed to have one of two disastrous effects upon her: either he made her feel angry--really viciously angry, as she expressed it--or he made her hopelessly inclined to giggle. "And to-day I want to giggle," she said to herself, "and if I do, he will never forgive me or forget." Aloud she said, with a gravity she was far from feeling-- "I don't want to be rude and contradict you, Uncle Arthur, but I cannot feel I am in a false position here. Cicely really needs me, for herself, as well as for Baba; this is a very happy home for me, and, because I still take care of Baba just as I did before, I don't feel I am doing anything beneath my dignity, or--subordinate." "I wish I could make you understand the fitness of things," Sir Arthur answered, with a grieved air, which never failed to amuse his niece. "Your Aunt Ellen and I would gladly offer you a home, but--I fear that, at the bottom of your heart, this Babylon, this Vanity Fair, makes an appeal to you." "I do like London," was the frank response, "and though it is very good of you to ask me to come to your house, I think I am really wanted here. Cicely would miss me, Baba would miss me, and--I like doing all I can for them. Cicely has been so good to me all through." "Wilful woman," Sir Arthur said, with a shrug of the shoulders; "you often remind me of your poor Aunt Margaret. You have her set obstinacy of character. She was never able to see any other point of view but her own, and you are very like her." "I--should like to be like Aunt Margaret," the girl answered; "and if she did like her own points of view, I think they were always very beautiful views. I have never met anybody like her." "She was a good woman," Sir Arthur said, smitten with sudden compunction. "I had no business to say a word against her; she was a good woman, but the thought of her wasted life hurts me." "Not wasted," Christina said; "I don't think her life was wasted. Her influence can't die away, even now. It was such a wonderful influence--like herself, so beautiful." "Yes," he repeated, "poor Margaret. She was a good woman, and it hurts me to think of all the trouble of her life. You are like her in many ways. God grant that your life may not hold the sorrows her life held." Uncle and niece were silent for a few moments after those solemnly-uttered words, and Christina stood looking out across the square, where the trees waved delicate green leaves against a background of May sky, her thoughts full of the beautiful woman who had entered so strangely into her life, through whose instrumentality so vast a change had come to her.