"But I should say, Margaret, that your disposition and Helen's are totally different. I can remember you a prim little girl sitting up in your high chair working your sampler or repeating Watt's hymns. And do you recollect your horror when I once went out of doors while I was putting on my gloves and afterwards proposed to race round the square? Ladies never did such things, you said. Now I have a suspicion that Helen might be very easily induced to race anybody along Regent Street." The colonel smiled. There was a time when he used to boast of his little girl's high spirits and untamed ways. "She has--" he began, but his wife interposed: "I remember you, Mary, as a regular hoyden," she observed, and was about to go on when the announcement of dinner put an end to the conversation. Mrs. Desmond could be a very pleasant companion when she chose, and upon this occasion she did choose, being anxious not only to obliterate from her husband's mind the painful impression caused by Helen's conduct, but also to convince her cousin that her marriage was an entirely happy one. Dinner was excellent and daintily served. In the evening an old friend of the colonel's dropped in, and there was plenty of bright talk. Colonel Desmond seemed profoundly contented, and his wife scarcely less so. Only Cousin Mary's thoughts wandered sometimes away from the cheerful voices and the pretty drawing-room, with its bright lights and fragrant flowers, to a small darkened chamber somewhere overhead, where she suspected that a forlorn little figure might be tossing restlessly and a young soul hardening for want of the love that is its right. "Poor young thing!" thought Cousin Mary, longing in her eager way to run to the rescue, and yet knowing that she must bide her time if she would not make bad worse. But, thinking thus, the softness of her cousin's manner and the ancient endearments that passed between husband and wife had rather an irritating effect upon her. Once or twice there was a sharpness in her speech that a little astonished the good colonel. "I expected from what I heard to find your cousin a charming woman," he said when he and his wife were alone together. "She has a pleasant enough face, but rather a sharp tongue, hasn't she?" "Poor Mary!" laughed Mrs. Desmond softly. "She is a good soul at heart. A little hard, no doubt, but she has many excellent points."