There was no carriage-drive on this side of the house, only a lawn with a world of flower-beds. Those visitors who wanted to enter in a ceremonious manner had to drive round by shrubbery and orchard to the back, where there were an old oak door and an entrance-hall. On this garden front there were only glass doors and long French windows, verandahs, and sunny parlours, opening one out of another. 'How do you do, my dear?' said the spinster heartily, as Ida alighted; 'I am very glad to see you. Why, how bright and blooming you look--not a bit like a sea-sick traveller.' 'Dear Miss Wendover, I ought to look bright when I am so glad to come to you; and, as to the other thing, I am never sea-sick.' 'What a splendid girl! That unhappy little Bessie can't cross to the Wight without being a martyr. But, Ida, I am not going to be called Miss Wendover. Only bishops and county magnates, and people of that kind, call me by that name. To you I am to be Aunt Betsy, as I am to the children at The Knoll.' 'Is not that putting me too much on a level--' 'With my own flesh and blood? Nonsense! I mean you to be as my own flesh and blood. I could not bear to have anyone about me who was not.' 'You are too good,' faltered Ida. 'How can I ever repay you?' 'You have only to be happy. It is your nature to be frank and truthful, so I will say nothing about that.' Ida blushed deepest scarlet. Frank and truthful--she--whose very name was a lie! And yet there could be no wrong done to Miss Wendover, she told herself, by her suppression of the truth. It was a suppression that concerned only Brian Walford and herself. No one else could have any interest in the matter. Betsy Wendover herself led the way to the bed-chamber that had been prepared for the new inmate. It was a dear old room, not spacious, but provided with two most capacious closets, in each of which a small gang of burglars could have hidden--dear old closets, with odd little corner cupboards inside them, and a most elaborate system of shelves. One closet had a little swing window at the top for ventilation, and this, Miss Wendover told Ida, was generally taken for a haunted corner, as the ventilating window gave utterance to unearthly noises in the dead watches of the night, and sometimes gave entrance to a stray cat from adjacent tiles. A cat less agile than the rest of his species had been known to entangle himself in the little swing window, and to hang there all the night, sending forth unearthly caterwaulings, to the unspeakable terror of Miss Wendover's guest, unfamiliar with the mechanism of the room, and wondering what breed of Hampshire demon or afrit was thus making night hideous.