She was a slight little body, this Corinne--blue-eyed, fair-haired, with a saucy face and upturned nose. Jack thought when he first saw her that she looked like a wren with its tiny bill in the air--and Jack was not far out of the way. And yet she was a very methodical, level-headed little wren, with several positive convictions which dominated her life--one of them being that everybody about her ought to do, not as they, but as she, pleased. She had begun, and with pronounced success, on her mother as far back as she could remember, and had then tried her hand on her stepfather until it became evident that as her mother controlled that gentleman it was a waste of time to experiment further. All of which was a saving of stones without the loss of any birds. Where she failed--and she certainly had failed, was with Jack, who though punctiliously polite was elusive and--never quite subdued. Yet the discovery made, she neither pouted nor lost her temper, but merely bided her time. Sooner or later, she knew, of course, this boy, who had seen nothing of city life and who was evidently dazed with all the magnificence of the stately home overlooking the Park, would find his happiest resting-place beneath the soft plumage of her little wing. And if by any chance he should fall in love with her--and what more natural; did not everybody fall in love with her?--would it not be wiser to let him think she returned it, especially if she saw any disposition on the young man's part to thwart her undisputed sway of the household? For months she had played her little game, yet to her amazement none of the things she had anticipated had happened. Jack had treated her as he would any other young woman of his acquaintance--always with courtesy--always doing everything to oblige her, but never yielding to her sway. He would laugh sometimes at her pretensions, just as he would have laughed at similar self-assertiveness on the part of any one else with whom he must necessarily be thrown, but never by thought, word or deed had he ever given my Lady Wren the faintest suspicion that he considered her more beautiful, better dressed, or more entertaining, either in song, chirp, flight or plumage, than the flock of other birds about her. Indeed, the Scribe knows it to be a fact that if Jack's innate politeness had not forbidden, he would many times have told her truths, some of them mighty unpleasant ones, to which her ears had been strangers since her school-girl days. This unstudied treatment, strange to say--the result really, of the boy's indifference--had of late absorbed her. What she could not have she generally longed for, and there was not the slightest question up to the present moment that Jack was still afield. Again the girl pressed the button of the cord within reach of her hand, and for the third time Hortense entered. “Have you told Parkins I want to know the very instant Mr. John comes in?” “Yes, miss.”