"But it is, then," Patty confessed, with honest promptness. "I found it out to-night, Elizabeth. When I saw those conceited people sweeping about in their splendid trains and looking as if all Melbourne belonged to them--when I heard that girl singing that preposterous twaddle, and herself and all her friends thinking she was a perfect genius--I felt that I would give anything, _anything_, just to rise up and be very grand and magnificent for a little while and crush them all into vulgarity and insignificance." "Patty!" murmured Elizabeth. "Yes, my dear, it shocks you, I know. But you wouldn't have me disguise the truth from you, would you? I wanted to pay them out. I saw they were turning up their noses at us, and I longed--I _raged_--to be in a position to turn up my nose at them, if only for five minutes. I thought to myself, oh, if the door should suddenly open and that big footman shout out, 'His Grace the Duke of So and So;' and they should all be ready to drop on their knees before such a grand person--as you know they would be, Elizabeth; they would _grovel_, simply--and he should look with a sort of gracious, ducal haughtiness over their heads and say to Mrs. Aarons, 'I am told that I shall find here the daughters of my brother, who disappeared from home when he was young, along with his wife, the Princess So and So.' You know, Elizabeth, our father, who never would talk about his family to anybody, _might_ have been a duke or an earl in disguise, for anything we know, and our mother was the very image of what a princess _ought_ to be--" "We should have been found out before this, if we had been such illustrious persons," said Elizabeth, calmly. "Yes, of course--of course. But one needn't be so practical. You are free to think what you like, however improbable it may be. And that is what I thought of. Then I thought, suppose a telegram should be brought in, saying that some enormously wealthy squatter, with several millions of money and no children, had left us all his fortune--" "I should think that kind of news would come by post," suggested Eleanor. "It might and it mightn't, Nelly. The old squatter might have been that queer old man who comes to the Library sometimes, and seems to take such interest in seeing us reading so hard. He might have thought that girls who were so studious would have serious views of life and the value of money. Or he might have overheard us castle-building about Europe, and determined to help us to realise our dreams. Or he might have fallen in love with Elizabeth--at a distance, you know, and in a humble, old-fashioned, hopeless way." "But that doesn't account for the telegram, Patty."