It was just such a day as stirs the blood of even old people, while it sets young hearts beating, and conjures up before youthful eyes all sorts of pleasant visions. To Helen, accustomed for so many years to a cloudless eastern sky, the sunshine, although it brought her renewed life, brought also vague indefinable longings. London with its endless streets and squares, its never-ending succession of human beings, its saddening sights and sounds, seemed to stifle her. She longed, scarcely knowing what it was for which she longed, for the green country, for freedom, for space. To Cousin Mary it had been possible to speak of these and many other things. Cousin Mary gone--gone too holding out only the vaguest promises of another meeting, and with no word at all about claiming that visit from Helen of which a good deal had been said in the early stages of their friendship, the girl, suddenly thrown back upon herself, felt, with the exaggerated feelings of youth, as though she were deserted by everybody. It was impossible that she could guess how hard Cousin Mary had tried to secure that visit from Helen about which she had, rather incautiously perhaps, spoken to her young favourite. For as the days went on, and Miss Macleod's stay had lengthened out beyond her original intention, her interest in Helen had increased, and had deepened into real affection. Beneath Cousin Mary's influence all the best part of Helen's nature came out. And, indeed, her deep affectionateness, her generous impulses, her quick repentances for wrong-doing, her power of receiving good impressions, all combined to make Helen a very fascinating little person to one who took the trouble to understand her disposition. That there was another side to Helen's character Miss Macleod knew. Such intense natures ever have their reverse side. She had her bad impulses as well as her good ones; and a fierce temper that it would need many years of patient effort to bring under control. There was a spice of recklessness in Helen, too, and an impatience of restraint. Hers was a nature that might harden and develop terrible possibilities for evil under adverse circumstances. All this Cousin Mary saw with painful distinctness as she watched the girl with ever-increasing interest. Accustomed as Mrs. Desmond declared she was to her cousin's vagaries, this last fancy of Miss Macleod's rather astonished that lady. That Helen should prefer a stranger to herself she regarded as merely another proof of her stepdaughter's perversity. But what Mary Macleod could see in the girl, and why she should want to carry off such an uninteresting child on a long visit, fairly puzzled Mrs. Desmond. It was not only perplexing, but extremely provoking, when it became evident that Miss Macleod would not accept a polite excuse, but kept returning to the charge, putting it into the colonel's head that Helen looked pale and needed change.