if Uncle Peter pleased.

SHE WAS YOUR MAMMA, TOO, WASN'T SHE?

His bookseller bought in the valentines for Sir Peter.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Rowlandson, when he read the order.

The sale catalogue described it as one of the most remarkable collections ever brought together, and intimated that the Museum should take advantage of a rare opportunity.

Another dealer was commissioned to buy one of Robert's pictures.

"Any one,—the best. Use your own judgment," said Sir Peter.

It was a charming study, unfinished, of course, that came the next afternoon: a boat, rolling heavily in gray water; and seen through mist, the great brown sail, looming, shadowy; one sailor, in a red jersey, at the tiller. In the corner Robert had scrawled his careless signature and the words,—"Valfjeldet, Norway, 1897." Sir Peter gently laid the picture upon the glowing coals of the grate.

"There are six boxes come from Mr. Rowlandson's shop, sir," said his housekeeper standing quietly behind him.

"Have the screws removed and send them up to Miss Phyllis's room," he replied. "They are old valentines, Burbage, old valentines that belonged to her m——for which she has a childish fondness."

II

"Doesn't it seem to you that the windows let in more sunlight of late, ma'am?" asked a housemaid. She had just finished cleaning those in the octagonal dining-room. Burbage inspected the windows.

"There is no change in the windows that I can see," she replied. "But there's more sunlight in the house than in many a year."

This comment of his old housekeeper, six weeks after Sir Peter brought Phyllis home, might be accepted as the epitome of her life there for ten long years. Sir Peter was as grim as ever to the servants; but, bless your heart, hadn't they caught him at his pranks on the floor? Hadn't they seen his haggard face when the doctor pronounced it diphtheria? Hadn't they seen him carry her downstairs in his own arms on the first day it was allowed? Hadn't they seen him helping her with her lessons, at night,—solving her complex problems in his head while she struggled over columns of figures, and waiting at the end of that tortuous road with a smile on his gaunt face, and the right answer, to prove hers right or wrong? But in languages, Sir Peter was left at the post. Her master in French was astonished until he learned her mother's name,—by accident, for it was rarely spoken in that house. The dead languages were alive to her, too. The shelves in her study-room, upstairs, contained Sir Peter's old "classics," prettily rebound. The commission went to Mr. Rowlandson; the execution was Rivière's. Sir Peter had scarcely looked into them since the old days at Cambridge.

Sunlight in the house, indeed. Her sweet voice, in sudden song, might be heard at any moment of the day; or the ripple of her piano; or her gay laughter, musical as the joyous notes of a bird.

She had her intent of them all. Even the determined mind of Burbage, stern-featured and steel-spectacled, she moulded to a plastic acquiescence with her own sweet will. In extreme urgency, when Burbage was very firm, indeed, Phyllis had a way of referring to dear Farquharson. Burbage learned to anticipate this by yielding in the nick of time.

By the way, they had not found a trace of Farquharson.

Several short, sharp battles she had with Sir Peter; the cause, in each instance, the same. He did not try to disguise his desire that she should forget her mother. The first encounter between them took place within a year of her home-coming.

"If I cannot remember my darling, darling mamma in your house, Uncle Peter, I shall not stay here," she declared. "I will go away and never, never come back any more. And then you would be sorry."

Sir Peter compromised with irrelevant sweets. But he saw she was terribly in earnest, for such a little girl.

From time to time a similar incident disturbed the loving relationship between them; a relationship that was perfect otherwise, in confidence, sincerity and affection.

When she was eighteen, some one told her she began to look like her mother.

"God forbid!" said Sir Peter, when she told him.

Phyllis went white.

"Uncle Peter, my mother was an angel. She was my father's——"

"Ruin," interposed Sir Peter, his brows darkening.

"She was his dream of Heaven. I heard him tell her so. She was a dear, sweet woman."

Sir Peter growled; but Phyllis always had the last word on these occasions.

"I love her memory and I always shall, as I should have dearly loved her if—if she could have stayed with me. You must never speak or even think unkindly of her if you want me to love you, or if you want me to live with you. She was my mother and——" Then she fled to her room. Burbage could have been heard murmuring, "There, there, my pretty."

It was true. As she grew older it became apparent she had inherited her mother's marvelous beauty. She was a tall girl; a mass of golden coils surmounted the proud head, set so well on her neck and shoulders; her eyes were the deepest blue; you might have thought her expression sad, but her sensitive mouth was mirthful as well as tender; in merriment her eyes danced. When she talked earnestly she caught her breath in the prettiest way; she had indescribable charm. Her hands were long and slender, unadorned with rings; she simply didn't care for them. She usually wore white, and the larger the hat the better she liked it.

By the time Phyllis was twenty, she had read all that was good for her, and was ready to look at life itself with frankness, and judge it by standards of her own. The windows of the Carlton Club knew Sir Peter no more. She led him everywhere. You might have seen them at the Abbey one day; on another in the Temple Gardens or looking up at Dr. Johnson's house, in Gough Square. Sir Peter gloomed in the doorways of shops while she made leisurely purchases within. He pointed out the best pictures in the National Gallery; and could tell her why they were the best. They motored through England and France; Sir Peter absorbed in old fortifications, Phyllis regardful of the babies tumbling through cottage doorways. In London one often saw them walking in the park, her face aglow with animation, her movements as free from constraint as a young deer; her flow of conversation never failing. Sir Peter, keeping step, regarded her, idolatrous. Unconsciously she showed him her soul, and looking therein he found his eyes blurred with unexpected tears.

Soft but imperious Phyllis! The theater bored Sir Peter beyond expression. But on First Nights you might be certain he would have a box. Radiant Phyllis, in white silk, leaning forward eagerly to catch every word, was tremulous with excitement at the end of the play. During the drive homeward Sir Peter endeavored, artfully, to conceal that he had slept through half an act.

You may be sure that mothers with eligible sons invited him to dine; grumbling, but facing the inevitable, he accepted. His hawk's eyes glowered at the young men: from Cambridge and Oxford, but he invited them to his house. Coaxed by their mothers they called the first time, and thereafter were with difficulty restrained. Phyllis was kind to each, and interested in all; but Sir Peter observed with satisfaction that she was most pleased when they came in pairs. He chuckled over his magazine, under a reading-lamp, at the far end of the library many times, while Phyllis entertained her admirers; but at times he scowled. "Too fast, too fast, you young fool," he muttered to his white mustache.

They were thoroughly agreeable young men, and Phyllis enjoyed it all hugely. She approached the consideration of the sex from a perfectly fresh and