Meanwhile Matilda Cookson had found an object in life, and was happy. It was well for her that her enthusiastic devotion to Mona was weighted by the ballast of conscientious work, or her last state might have been worse than her first. As it was, she laboured hard, and when her family enquired the cause of her sudden fit of diligence, she took a pride in looking severely mysterious. Miss Maclean was a princess in disguise, and she was the sole custodian of the great secret. The constant effort to refrain from confiding it, even to her sister, was, in its way, as valuable a bit of moral discipline as was the laborious translation of the _Geier-Wally_. "I would have come sooner," she said one day to Mona at Castle Maclean, "but my people can't see why I want to walk on the beach at this time of year, and it is so difficult to get rid of Clarinda. Of course if they knew you were Lady Munro's niece they would be only too glad that I should meet you anywhere, but I have not breathed a syllable of that." She spoke with pardonable pride. She had not yet learned to spare Mona's feelings, and the latter sighed involuntarily. "Thank you," she said; "but I don't want you to meet me 'on the sly.'" "I thought of that. Mother would not be at all pleased at my getting to know you as things are, or as she thinks they are; but if there was a row, and she found out that you were Lady Munro's niece, she would more than forgive me. You will tell people who you are some time, won't you?" For, after all, in what respect is a princess in disguise better than other people, if the story has no _dénouement_? "I wish very much," said Mona patiently, "that you would try to see the matter from my point of view. I have taken no pains to prevent people from finding out who my other relatives are; but, as a matter of personal taste, I prefer that they should not talk of it. Besides, it is just as unpleasant to me to be labelled Lady Munro's niece, as to be labelled Miss Simpson's cousin. People who really care for me, care for myself." Matilda had been straining her eyes in the direction of "yonder shining light," and she certainly thought she saw it. The difficulty was to keep it in view when she was talking to her mother or Clarinda. "You know I care for you yourself," she said. "I don't think I ever cared for anybody so much in my life." "Hush-sh! It is not wise to talk like that when you know me so little. If the scale turns, you will hate me all the more because you speak so strongly now." "_Hate you!_" laughed Matilda, with the sublime confidence of eighteen. "How goes _Geier-Wally_?" Mona had a decided gift for teaching, and the next half-hour passed pleasantly for both of them. Then, in a very shamefaced way, Matilda drew a letter from her pocket. "I wanted to tell you," she said, "I have been writing to--to--my friend."