Richard laughed softly, but there was a queer ring in the laugh, and he came over stumblingly and put his arm round his mother’s shoulder. “Never mind how I get such sense as I have, mother; I have so much time to think, it would be a wonder if I hadn’t some. But I think we had better try to study her, and coax her along, and not fob her off as a very inferior person, or we shall have our hands full in earnest. My opinion is, she has got that which will save her and us too--a very high spirit, which only needs opportunity to develop into a remarkable thing; and, take my word for it, mother, if we treat her as a chieftainess, or princess, or whatever she is, and not simply as a dusky person, we shall come off better and she will come off better in the long run. She is not darker than a Spaniard, anyhow.” At this point Marion entered the room, and her mother rehearsed briefly to her what their talk had been. Marion had had little sleep, and she only lifted her eyebrows at them at first. She was in little mood for conciliation. She remembered all at once that at supper the evening before her sister-in-law had said How! to the butler, and had eaten the mayonnaise with a dessert spoon. But presently, because she saw they waited for her to speak, she said, with a little flutter of maliciousness: “Wouldn’t it be well for Richard--he has plenty of time, and we are also likely to have it now--to put us all through a course of instruction for the training of chieftainesses? And when do you think she will be ready for a drawing-room--Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s, or ours?” “Marion!” said Mrs. Armour severely; but Richard came round to her, and, with his fresh, child-like humour, put his arm round her waist and added “Marion, I’d be willing to bet--if I were in the habit of betting--my shaky old pins here against a lock of your hair that you may present her at any drawing-room--ours or Queen Victoria’s--in two years, if we go at it right; and it would serve Master Frank very well if we turned her out something, after all.” To which Mrs. Armour responded almost eagerly: “I wish it were only possible, Richard. And what you say is true, I suppose, that she is of rank in her own country, whatever value that may have.” Richard saw his advantage. “Well, mother,” he said, “a chieftainess is a chieftainess, and I don’t know but to announce her as such, and--” “And be proud of it, as it were,” put in Marion, “and pose her, and make her a prize--a Pocahontas, wasn’t it?--and go on pretending world without end!” Marion’s voice was still slightly grating, but there was in it too a faint sound of hope. “Perhaps,” she said to herself, “Richard is right.”