"She’ll get on fast enough now," he said to himself, as he trotted down the drive; "young folk want young things about them, and up there," with a suggestive glance backward at the stately residence he had just left, "they are all as old as Methuselah. She looked a totally different being this morning, from the sulky, discontented girl I saw last time. But I don’t deny she’s a handful--takes after her mother, I suppose. Conrad was as nice a fellow as ever breathed, but I never had much of a fancy for his wife, poor thing; she was too much of a woman of the world for old Henry Marley. But there, he isn’t, by any means, all he ought to be." And the dear old doctor sighed as he realised how far short he was of being a true copy of the Great Example. The doctor had not long left, when a footman called at Carson Rise, with a basket containing some magnificent peaches and hot-house flowers, "with Mrs. Howell’s compliments, and she would be glad to know how the young lady was." Mrs. Beauchamp was out for a drive, so the parlourmaid came up to Monica for a message. "Oh, Harriet, how lovely!" cried the girl; "do take them out carefully while I write a little note to send back. How very kind of Mrs. Howell." "The same lady has sent every day to enquire for you, miss," said the maid, who was very much impressed by the grandeur of the Howell livery, and the importance of the individual who wore it. "Has she really? No one has mentioned it before," said Monica; "I ought to have been told." And there was a suggestion of displeasure in her tones. "Mrs. Beauchamp knew, miss, of course, and so did Barnes," Harriet hastened to say, in defence of herself. "Very well, Harriet, it was not your fault," said Monica, and she busied herself in writing a little girlish note of thanks, which brought tears of pleasure and gratification to the eyes of the good-natured, motherly woman who received it, and then slipped it into her pocket for fear her tyrannical young daughter should come across it, and make fun of it. For Lily Howell had not yet grown reconciled to the idea of "_that_ Monica Beauchamp" getting into her home, and prying into everything, and then going off to make fun of all the mistakes she knew her mother must have made. There had been a great scene upon her return home, on the Monday evening, and she had exclaimed long and loudly against the fate which had allowed such an unfortunate thing to come to pass. Mrs. Howell, instead of severely reprimanding her daughter for being so insulting and rude, had wept feebly, and bowed beneath the angry girl’s storm of words; but in her heart she treasured the remembrance of the kind words and very real gratitude of a daughter of the aristocracy to a poor, common-place woman, such as she was allowed no opportunity of forgetting that she, Caroline Howell, was. *CHAPTER XII.* *"A HUNGRY FEELING IN MY BRAIN."*