‘I should like to hear her. Félicie used to sing to me of an evening, while I sat in the dusk to save my poor eyes, such pretty simple French _chansons_. How I wish you could come here and stay, with me!’ ‘You are very kind to think of it, Miss Glenlyne,’ answered Lucille, thinking what a curious life it would be with this old lady, who seemed half a century older than the energetic unconquerable Homer Sivewright, ‘but I’m afraid I couldn’t leave my grandfather.’ ‘Your grandfather?’ ‘He is not really my grandfather, though I believed that he was till very lately; but he has been good to me and brought me up. I owe him everything.’ Miss Glenlyne questioned Lucille a good deal about her past life, its early years and so on, and seemed warmly interested. She was not an old lady who poured out her spare affections upon more or less deserving members of the animal kingdom, and she had been of late years almost cut off from communion with humanity. Her heart opened unawares to receive Lucille. ‘If you are my nephew’s daughter, it stands to reason that I am your great-aunt,’ she said; ‘and I shall expect you to pay me some duty. You must come to stay with me as soon as this adopted grandfather is well enough to do without you.’ ‘Dear Miss Glenlyne, I shall be most happy to come. I am more glad than I can tell you to find some one who is really related to me.’ ‘Don’t call me Miss Glenlyne, then, but Aunt Glenlyne,’ said the old lady authoritatively. Miss Spilling felt as if she could have fallen to the ground in a swoon when she came into the drawing-room five minutes afterwards and heard the strange young person call her mistress ‘Aunt Glenlyne.’ ‘How you stare, Spilling!’ cried the old lady. ‘This young lady is my grandniece, Miss Lucille Glenlyne.’ After this Spilling stared with almost apoplectic intensity of gaze. ‘Lor, Miss Glenlyne, that must be one of your jokes,’ she exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t call one of the Spalding Glenlynes your niece, and I know you’ve no other.’ ‘I never make jokes,’ answered her mistress with dignity; ‘and I beg that you will show Miss Lucille Glenlyne all possible respect, now, and on every other occasion. I have ordered a hurried dinner to be prepared for Miss Lucille and her friends, who, I am sorry to say, have to return to London this evening. They will dine in the back drawing-room, so that I may take my own simple meal with them.’ Miss Spilling felt as if the universe had suddenly begun to crumble around her. Her hold upon that sense of identity which sustains mankind amidst the mysteries of an unexplainable world seemed to waver. Dinner ordered and without prior consultation with her—a new era of waste and rioting set in while her back was turned! She fumbled in an ancient beaded reticule, produced a green glass bottle of weak salts, and sniffed vehemently.