said, with a little nod, “I agree with you. There is a good deal I have to explain, but that can wait. Yes. That will leave us freedom on both sides, for I warn you, you are very likely to disapprove of me. I hardly liked to use the word experiment, but I should have had to get at it somehow. You see, my sympathies are very much with what I suppose you call the new woman.”

“When you’re my age, my dear,” said Philippa, bluntly, “you will have discovered that there’s nothing new under the sun. However, you can be as new as you like here, and you will charm Emily—so long as you don’t consider it a part of your mission to call for brandies and sodas. She is a blue-ribboner, and so is Jane, the parlourmaid.”

Claudia detected ridicule, and flushed.

“I think teetotalers are extraordinarily ill-balanced, though I respect them,” she returned stiffly.

“Yes, please respect them,” said Philippa, with a laugh. “Now, will you come to your room?”

Claudia got up and went to the window.

She turned with easier excitement.

“A river! Is that really a river? Oh, delightful!”

“Yes, we can provide you with that, and it is a very tidy river for fish, I believe—at least Harry Hilton says so,” said her cousin, following her. “He will be able to tell you more about it.”

“Oh, I don’t care about fishing,” the girl said hastily. “I was thinking of its capabilities, and how splendidly one can utilise them.”

“Its capabilities?” repeated Philippa, puzzled. “Well, whatever they are, your window commands them, for we have given you the south room on account of the view, otherwise there is a larger one to the west. But come and see for yourself, for if you prefer the other, it is quite easy to change. Jane will help you to unpack.”

“No, thank you,”—Claudia spoke firmly—“I like to do everything for myself.”

“Well, you know best, only don’t crowd your experiments. Here is your room,” went on Miss Cartwright, opening a door at the end of a passage; “your room, that is, unless you like the other better. I hope they have brought up all your things. Dinner is at seven, because Emily has a meeting to-night. You will have to accommodate yourself to meetings. By the way, Harry Hilton is staying with us, and he says he once met you at the Grants’.”

“I dare say,” returned Claudia, indifferently. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, he is a cousin on the other side of the house, one of the Hiltons of Thornbury, you know—or perhaps you don’t know—and is here a good deal—on and off. Now I will leave you in peace.”

She was gone, and Claudia, barely glancing at her pretty room, sat down on the window-seat, and stared enthusiastically at the strip of silver light which marked the course of the river.

It gave a charm and variety which would otherwise have been wanting, for though the country round was fertile and smiling, it had neither breadth nor distinctive features. At one point, indeed, there was a tantalising peep of vanishing blue hills, but the foliage of the elms was heavy, and the trees themselves stiff with the cutting which deprived them of their lower branches. After a long silent gaze, Claudia broke out into an exclamation—

“Oh, how one could improve it!” she cried, leaning forward, and eagerly tracing lines and curves in the air with a sweeping finger. “What opportunities they have thrown away! To raise the ground there by a long beautiful slope of grass, to plant out those hideous chimneys, and cut, cut, cut! They will—they must—let me do it, and then one could get the most splendid effects of light out of the water. Emily and her meetings and her blue ribbons may be an infliction, but I could bear almost anything for the sake of having a river to study.”

She jumped up eagerly, unlocked a bag, and took out a book full of blank pages, in which she was presently alternately writing and drawing, not pausing so much as to look at the garden below when she heard voices beneath her window.

Meanwhile Philippa Cartwright ran downstairs to a small morning-room where she wrote notes with vigour until her sister, Anne, the eldest of the three, a woman rather heavily built, and with a kindly sympathetic face, looked in upon her.

“Is Claudia come?”

“Yes—and—unfortunately—I—was—not—home—in time,” said Philippa, speaking more slowly as she wrote more hastily. “There!” She folded and flattened the note, addressed it, and began another. “Where’s Harry?”

“Matthews has got hold of him about the vines. Can’t I help you?”

“Bless you, my dear Anne, haven’t you yet learned to keep in your own sphere? Notes belong to mine. By the way, talking of spheres, I think you may as well enlarge yours and take in Claudia.”

“Why? Isn’t she nice?”

“Very! Charming! And I don’t deserve that speech when I am presenting her to you just because I think she will be such an effective charge. See if she doesn’t distinguish our house!”

Anne shook her head gravely. “You don’t like her.”

“I do, I do, I do! Don’t you know me well enough to see that I am at this moment dying of jealousy? It is such a splendid thing to be young, as one only finds out too late. Her dark eyes are so pretty, and her figure is so pretty, and her frock fits so well! One oughtn’t to have such contrasts forced upon one if one is expected to keep amiable. Why, up to to-day, I had fancied that because Emily had so few grey hairs, she was quite a young thing! It is all very well to pretend to be philosophical. I say straight out that I hate growing old.”

“Is that all you have against Claudia?” asked Anne, smiling.

“Oh, it’s enough! It means that you will lose your heart to her, and so will Harry.”

“Harry?”

“Yes. I am not sure he did not do so a little the first time that he met her. Well—he must take his chance. You and his mother are always fussing about his marrying, and here’s his opportunity. I don’t know that even you can wish for anything better. An extremely good-looking girl, and a pretty fortune.” Philippa began to laugh.

“What is it?”

“Only something she told me. Never mind. She will tell you all without loss of time.”

“Well, as to Harry, I give my consent—if you do; for, in spite of jeers, you will be quite as particular as I. I wonder whether there is really any chance of his taking a fancy?” questioned the elder sister, with a touch of wistfulness behind her words to which Philippa at once became responsive.

“He is a very good fellow, bless him!” she declared heartily, “a very good fellow indeed, even if he has a few more faults than you and Minnie will admit, and I must see a great deal more of Miss Claudia before I give my consent—which has so much to do with the matter!” she added, falling back on her usual manner.

“Harry thinks a great deal of your judgment.”

“That’s an appreciation apt to be tucked on one side in the great affairs of life. Still, I’m very much obliged to Harry for the compliment, and it will certainly make me careful to avoid rash counsels.”

Claudia came down to dinner in excellent time. Her black dress was well cut, and set off the small