She felt her uncle’s death acutely; he and the baby were all she had to love and to love her--for Hugo had told her a thousand times that he hated the sight of her--and except Maude Hesketh and Frances Lumley, she had no friends. Frances Lumley was a clever, bright, energetic young woman, whose brother, she declared, had stolen her good looks. “By rights the boy should be the plain one of the family--and it is _I_ who am ugly.” But this was an extreme statement; Miss Lumley’s figure was the embodiment of slim grace, her hair soft and beautiful; her eyes, though sparkling and intelligent, were too small; her mouth, on the other hand, was too large; perhaps had their dimensions been reversed, Blagdon, who found her amusing and outspoken, might have asked her to marry him! The Rector’s daughter was popular with all degrees of society; a first-rate musician, an entertaining companion, and a capable nurse. The cottagers adored her, “Miss Frances was so funny, and told them such queer tales, all the while she was working over a case, you scarcely could tell you had a sore leg or a boil, or a burn, she was that clever with her fingers, and her tongue.” She was also her father’s right hand, copied out his sermons, wrote his letters, read to him, and cared for him like a guardian angel. Miss Lumley was pathetically anxious to extend her sheltering wing over the poor lonely girl at the big house, and did her utmost to entice her to the Rectory, to tea, to tennis, to visit among the cottagers--in short, to make some break in that solitary monotonous existence. “When Aunt Denton used to fill her letters with _you_,” she said, “I little expected that her Letty would be the great lady here, that she would go on my errands, and mend my gloves, and that I should see so much of her.” “Too much, I’m afraid--this is the third time I am here in a week!” “Can’t have too much of a good thing! and you come to be useful--you are always ornamental--and help me with the Sewing Club, you know you have nothing to do in that big rambling place. Fraser won’t let you touch the garden, the rouged and rustling Bates runs the house--all you may do is to practise your singing and play patience.” “But I never play cards,” protested Letty. “There are other games of patience, my dear--_pied de la lettre_! Your husband has old-fashioned ideas about his partner’s duties, but is up to date about his own.” “I don’t understand you, Francie.” “No? well then I’ll explain. The wife creed is in his blood, and belongs to the prehistoric race that treated women as beasts of burden, and beat them with clubs; later on, women were domestic slaves, and more recently--say a hundred years ago--mere nurses and upper servants, kept at home all the year round making samplers and pickles, and shirts, and jam--and having babies!” “Frances!”