Spilling, with a visage gloomy as Cassandra’s, retired to obey. It was nearly the time for Janet and Lucius to depart, in order to catch a convenient train for their return. Lucille wrote a little note to Mrs. Milderson, asking for a small portmanteau of necessaries to be sent to her; and then with a tender hand-pressure, and a kiss on the landing outside the drawing-room, the lovers parted for a little while, and Lucille was left alone with her great-aunt. It was a strangely sudden business, yet there was something in the old lady’s clinging affectionateness that attached the girl to her already. She seemed like some one who had long pined for some creature to love, and who had found her desire in Lucille. Miss Spilling retired to the housekeeper’s room—a snug little apartment in the basement—and sat with her feet on the fender, consuming buttered toast and strong tea, and talking over this new state of affairs with the cook, while Lucille and Miss Glenlyne had the drawing-room all to themselves. ‘Do you really believe as how she is missus’s niece?’ asked the cook, when she had heard Miss Spilling’s recital. ‘No more than you are, Martha,’ answered the indignant Spilling. ‘Only she’s more artful than the common run of impostors, and she’s backed up by that letter of Mr. Pullman’s. We all know what lawyers are, and that _they’ll_ swear to anything.’ ‘But what would Mr. Pullman gain by it, miss?’ ‘Who knows? That’s his secret. There’s some plot hatching between ’em all, and Mr. Pullman lends himself to it, and wants Miss Glenlyne to leave her money to this young woman—and he’s to get half of it, I daresay.’ ‘Ah,’ said cook sententiously, ‘it’s a wicked world!’ And then Miss Spilling and the cook began to talk of Miss Glenlyne’s will—a subject which they had worn threadbare long ago, but to which they always returned with equal avidity. CHAPTER IX. GEOFFREY HAS THOUGHTS OF SHANGHAI. Cheered and sustained by the hope of another happy afternoon with Janet in the little cottage parlour, Geoffrey Hossack made himself wonderfully agreeable to his cousins Belle and Jessie, and shot the game on his uncle’s estate, and on the estates of his uncle’s neighbours, with a good will. He was always popular, and in this part of Hampshire he was accepted as a product of the soil, and cherished accordingly. His father had been liked before him, and people expressed their regret that an alien trader should occupy the house where that gentleman had once dispensed what our ancestors were wont to call an elegant hospitality.