Meanwhile the preparations for the change went quietly on. The old Roncevalle house was one that belonged to the Varians; having been bought by Mr. Varian in those lordly days, when laying field to field, and house to house, seems the natural outlet of egotism and youth. Felix Varian, young and used to success, had the aspirations of most young and wealthy men. He proposed in the first flush of satisfaction in his home, to make it a fine estate, worthy of his name and of the yellow-haired baby, who had now grown up to wear a black habit and a girdle round his waist. He bought right and left, and made some rather unprofitable purchases. His early death left matters somewhat involved, but yet, when all was settled up, the Varians were still a wealthy family, and the young heir had a good deal to take with him to his work in that dirty down-town street, of which Missy thought with such loathing and contempt, and he with such fervor of hope. Missy's father had had a comfortable little property, which had been thriftily managed, and this was now to be hers exclusively. It was by no means a princely settlement, but it was quite as much as an unmarried woman needed to live comfortably upon, and she felt that her mother had done quite right in not offering her a cent of the Varian money, which she never would have touched. She had hated her stepfather fervently as a child; now she felt strangely drawn to him, and as if they had a common injury. How he would have scorned this infatuation, and resented this appropriation of his gorgeous and luxurious gold. The Roncevalle house had always been kept in order, and rented furnished. It was a comfortable looking house, standing close to the street, with a broad piazza, and having a pretty view of the bay. It was very well--but oh! as a home, coming after the one she had grown up in! Poor Missy loathed it. She had made it part of her capable management of things to keep this house furnished from the overflow of their own. It was a family joke that this was the hospital for disabled and repaired furniture, the retreat to which things out of style and undesirable were committed. If a new carpet were coveted at home, it was so good an excuse to say the Roncevalle carpets needed renovating, and it was best to put the new ones on the floors at home. When Missy's dainty taste tired of a lamp or a piece of china, it was ordered over to the Roncevalle. It may be imagined with what feelings she contemplated living over those discarded carpets, eating her dinner off that condemned china, being mistress of that third-rate house.