'How hard you are on her!' returned Mildred, finding it impossible to restrain a smile; but in reality she felt a little anxious. Olive had seemed more than usually absorbed during the last few days; there was a concentrated gravity in her manner that had struck Mildred more than once, but all questioning had been in vain. 'I am not unhappy--at least, not more than usual. I am only thinking out some troublesome thoughts,' she had said when Mildred had pressed her the previous night. 'No, you cannot do anything for me, Aunt Milly. I only want to help myself and other people to do right.' And Mildred, who was secretly weary of this endless scrupulosity, and imagined it was only a fresh attack of Olive's troublesome conscience, was fain to rest content with the answer, though she reproached herself not a little afterwards for a selfish evasion of a manifest duty. The remainder of the day passed over pleasantly enough. Dr. Heriot had contrived to make his peace with Miss Trelawny, for she had regained her old serenity of manner when Mildred saw her again. She came just as they were starting, to beg that Mildred would spend a long day at Kirkleatham House. 'Papa is going over to Appleby, to the Sessions Court, and I shall be alone all day to-morrow. Do come, Mildred,' she pleaded. 'You do not know what a treat it will be to me.' And though Mildred hesitated, her objections were all overruled by Richard, who insisted that nobody wanted her, and that a holiday would do her good. Richard's arguments prevailed, and Mildred thoroughly enjoyed her holiday. Some hours of unrestrained intercourse only convinced her that Ethel Trelawny's faults lay on the surface, and were the result of a defective education and disadvantageous circumstances, while the real nobility of her character revealed itself in every thought and word. She had laid aside the slight hauteur and extravagance that marred simplicity and provoked the just censure of men like Dr. Heriot; lesser natures she delighted to baffle by an eccentricity that was often ill-timed and out of place, but to-day the stilts, as Dr. Heriot termed them, were out of sight. Mildred's sincerity touched the right keynote, her brief captiousness vanished, unconsciously she showed the true side of her character. Gentle, though unsatisfied; childishly eager, and with a child's purity of purpose; full of lofty aims, unpractical, waiting breathless for mere visionary happiness for which she knew no name; a sweet, though subtle egotist, and yet tender-hearted and womanly;--no wonder Ethel Trelawny was a fascinating study to Mildred that long summer's day. Mildred listened with unwearied sympathy while Ethel dwelt pathetically on her lonely and purposeless life, with its jarring gaieties and absence of congenial fellowship.