certificates and other documents forming what one might call her dossier, Owen had really no choice but to engage the prodigy.

When she received the letter announcing the fact Miss Gibbs danced with delight.

"Two pounds a week! Think of it!" Thus she besought her cousin Fanny, a rather full-blown young woman employed in a "drapery-house" at Brixton. "And easy hours—with an hour off for lunch! Isn't it lovely!"

"You'll have the office 'commish' to pay," her cousin reminded her, "and I know all about those short hours! Sound well, but they generally want overtime out of you—without paying for it either!"

"Do they?" Antonia's joy was momentarily checked. Then she recovered her spirits. "Anyway, even then it's a good post, and I can easily pay the commission out of two pounds!"

"Yes, of course." Fanny, whose natural optimism was somewhat impaired by her experience in drapers' shops, cheered up also. "It's a grand opportunity for you, Toni, and mind you make the most of it."

"Rather," returned Toni gaily. "I'm to start to-morrow, so this is my last free night. Aren't you glad some people are coming in to tea?"

"Yes." Fanny, recalled to the immediate present, began her preparations for the tea-party. "Josh'll be pleased to hear of your luck, Toni; he's real fond of you, you know."

"Is he?" Toni, pulling off her flannel blouse, spoke a trifle absently.

"Yes. If I weren't fond of you myself I declare I'd be jealous! Don't know how it is, all the boys seem to take to you straight away, Toni, and you don't care a pin for any of 'em!"

"Perhaps that's why," said Toni cheerfully, voicing a truth without in the least realizing it. "After all, who is there to care for? Jack Brown, or young Graves, or that funny little Walter Britton out of Lea and Harper's?" She plunged her glowing face into a basin of cold water as she spoke.

"No. I s'pose they're not quite your sort." Fanny stared thoughtfully at her cousin. "I don't know how it is, Toni—you are my cousin, your father was Dad's own brother—and yet you're as different from us as—as chalk from cheese."

She in her turn had uttered a profound truth. Between Toni and the rest of the commonplace lower-middle-class household was a great gulf fixed, a gulf which was the more inexplicable because it was clearly visible to the parties on either side of the chasm.

Red-faced, brawny Fred Gibbs, the butcher, his equally red-faced, though slightly more refined wife, and their several sons and daughters, belonging, most of them, to the category of "fine" boys and girls, were a good-humoured, kindly people enough; yet between them and the pretty, dark-eyed Antonia there was not the slightest vestige of resemblance, either in looks, manners, or disposition.

Not that Toni gave herself airs. On the contrary, she was the most cheerful and light-hearted little soul in the world. She flung herself bodily into all the family's interests and pursuits, helped her uncle with his books and her aunt with her housework, was Fanny's sworn confidante and ally in all matters of the heart. The younger children adored her for her good looks, her vivacity, her high spirits; and even the flashes of rage which now and then marred her usually sunny temper were fascinating in their very fire.

Yet—with it all she was not, never would be, one of them. Fanny was inclined to put it down to her foreign blood—for Toni's mother had been Italian. The elder Gibbs fancied the girl's superior education was responsible—for Toni had been to a real "Seminary for Young Ladies," in contradistinction to the Council School attended by her cousins; while as for Toni herself, though she was as fully conscious as the rest that she was "different, somehow," she could never say, with any certainty, in what the difference lay.

Perhaps a psychologist would have found Antonia's position an interesting one. Briefly, her history was this.

The Gibbs were North-Country people, a good old yeoman family who had been in service with an older and more aristocratic people in the county of Yorkshire. The family, however, had begun, a few generations back, to die out. Instead of the usual lusty sons, only daughters had been born to most of the Gibbs, and they in their turn married and died, in the nature of things relinquishing their own name, until there were few left.

So the race dwindled, until old Matthew Gibbs and his two sons Fred and Roger were the last representatives of the old stock; and to the father's bitter disappointment neither boy would consent to settle down on the farm and carry out the tradition of the family. Fred, always a pushing, commercially-minded lad, found farming too slow and unprofitable to satisfy him, and he took service in a butcher's shop at York, as a first step towards his goal, London, in which city he eventually made his home, married a Cockney girl, and settled down for the rest of his prosperous life.

The second son, Roger, early showed a desire to travel; and though his father would have kept him at home, he realized that after all youth will be served, and let the boy go out into the world as soon as he had passed his eighteenth birthday.

Being possessed of unlimited confidence, exceptional strength and a light-hearted determination to make something of life, Roger was successful from the start. As is often her way with those from whom she means, later, to exact a heavy toll, Fate smiled upon the good-looking young man who faced her so gaily. He got one post after another: secretary, mechanic, groom—for he was equally clever with hands and head. In this or that capacity he travelled quite extensively for some years, and finally, having a natural bent for languages, came to Rome in the position of courier to a rich American family. It happened that the daughter of the house had an Italian maid, a beautiful, refined girl from Southern Italy; and the young people quickly fell in love. In spite of his apparent irresponsibility Roger had saved a little money, and within six months he had married his Italian girl and carried her off to live in a village on the side of a mountain not far from Naples, where for four blissful years they lived in perfect contentment.

Old Matthew Gibbs, having in his later years sustained heavy agricultural losses, was dead, and there was nothing to call Roger back to England. He much preferred, indeed, to remain in the South, and as their wants were simple he and his wife were able to live quite comfortably on Roger's own little bit of money and the few lire he made through the kindly offices of the village priest, who liked the gay young Englishman and put many odd jobs—translation, the acting as interpreter and guide to tourists, and other things of the sort—in his way.

When Toni came to complete the trio, their happiness was complete; and for three years after her birth the little house on the hill-side was the home of joy and love and all the pleasant domestic virtues and graces.

When the child was three years old, the elder Antonia, herself only a girl, died, after twenty-four hours' fever; and in one black hour Roger paid for all the sunny days with which Fortune had so lavishly endowed him.

When at length he summoned up resolution to face the future he determined, with a passionate desire to carry out his young wife's unspoken entreaty, to devote himself to his child; and with this intention he stayed on bravely in the little home from which the sunshine had departed.

For nearly six years they lived together in the tiny village near Naples; and gradually the pall began to lift from the young man's spirit, and the sunshine and the flowers, the blue sky and sea, and the snow-capped mountains made their appeal once again to the warm, ardent soul which sorrow had darkened.

During these six years father and daughter had lived frugally, almost as the peasants lived; yet with a daintiness, an order, which were unknown to the peasants. The little Antonia—Toni, as they called her—grew straight