He nodded. “Yes, next year we’ll get one. Meanwhile write to Helen, and tell her we’ll be over to-morrow afternoon.” “And I?” Ellice asked. John looked at her. “Why—no, child, you’ll stop at home and look after the house, eh?” He nodded to them and went out. “Is she there—alone?” Ellice asked. “Who, dear?” “This Helen, your aunt. Is it usual to call your aunt just plain Helen?” “No, I suppose it isn’t, and she is not there alone, as you ask. She is living with a girl who has just come into a great deal of money—Miss Joan Meredyth.” “What is she like?” the girl asked quickly. Constance smiled. “I don’t know, dear. You see, I have never seen her.” “Then I hope,” Ellice said between her clenched teeth, “I hope she is ugly, ugly as sin!” “I think,” said Constance gently, “that you are very silly and foolish!” Yet when the morrow came it was Ellice and not Constance who sat beside John in the trap, and was driven by him the six odd miles to Starden. For Constance had one of “her headaches.” It was no imaginary ailment, but a headache that prostrated her and filled her with pain, that made every sound an agony. She lay in her room, the blinds drawn, and all the household hushed. “I’ll write that we’ll go to-morrow, dear,” John said. “No, go to-day. I should be glad, Johnny. Go to-day and take Ellice, I am so much better alone; and by the time you come home perhaps I shall have been able to sleep it off.” So Johnny Everard drove Ellice over to Starden that afternoon. Helen Everard received them in the drawing-room. She was fond of Johnny Everard and his sister. This dark-faced girl she did not know, though she had heard of her. And now she looked at her with interest. It was an interesting face, such a face as one does not ordinarily see. “One day, if she lives, she will be a beautiful woman,” Helen thought. “To-day she is a gawky, passionate, ill-disciplined child; and I am afraid, terribly afraid, she is very much in love with that great, cheery, good-looking nephew of mine.” “Come,” she said, “Joan is in the garden. I promised that when you came I would take you to her. You have heard about her of course?” Helen added to John. “Only a little, that she is an heiress, and has come into Starden.” “She was very poor, poor child, and I think she had a hard and bitter time of it. Then the wheel of fortune took a turn. Her uncle died, and left her Starden and a great deal of money. So here she is.” Helen felt a hand grip her arm, and turned to look down into a thin face, in which burned a pair of passionate eyes. “Is she—pretty?” the girl asked. “I think,” Helen said slowly, “that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”