“Go away, you little dark gipsy! Laurie and I don’t want to play with you!” she cried, driving her away with a sharp little slap that sent Gipsy, sobbing, to hide her tingling cheek in the housekeeper’s skirts. The servants adopted the epithet, turning it into Gipsy Darke, and thus it remained ever after. Lelia was five years old then, and the despised waif just about three. Laurie was eight, the only and motherless child of Miss Willoughby’s eldest brother, the general. He was a handsome, brown-eyed boy, the constant playmate of the radiant, blond Lelia, for their homes were under one roof, Mrs. Ritchie having gone to live with her widowed brother, when the colonel met his death on the field of battle. Miss Willoughby’s haughty little niece and nephew never deigned to make a playmate of the pretty little waif whose dark eyes, full of wistful love and longing, followed them about their childish sports. If she came too near them Lelia always drove her angrily away, exclaiming spitefully: “Papa always hated Indians and gipsies, and so do I. You need not offer us your ugly toys and wild flowers. We don’t want them, and we hate you!” Laurie Willoughby never disputed Lelia’s authority, never took Gipsy’s part, but neither did he join in his cousin’s active hostility. He was a quiet, undemonstrative boy, and he knew that if he went contrary to Lelia’s will she would slap his face as readily as she did the little waif’s, with her big, wistful, dark eyes, like a frightened fawn’s under her cloud of silky, black ringlets. He was a little gentleman, he knew it was not manly to fight with girls, least of all his vixenish cousin, whom he had been told by his aunt was going to be his little wife when they got old enough to marry. It was a pet project of the family to unite the pair’s fortunes indeed, so they did all in their power to foster their childish love. So all three were grown up now. Laurie, Lelia, and Gipsy, and as the latter stood on the verge of the cliff in the golden glow of the June morning, gazing far down the dizzy height at the express-train flashing along over the steel rails, and heard the shrill whistle announcing its arrival at the station, she knew that Miss Willoughby’s expected visitors, the devoted cousins, had arrived, and would soon be at The Crags. Nothing else had been talked of for weeks but this visit, the first in five long years, for Laurie and Lelia had both been abroad several years finishing their educations--he at a German university, she at a Parisian boarding-school. How fine and grand they would be, and what great doings would go on at The Crags, quite upsetting Miss Willoughby’s literary labors; for a large house-party had been invited to meet the cousins, and by to-morrow all would be arrived, and the staid old mansion turned topsyturvy with fun and frolic, and dancing and coquetry.