up’ for me, as the poor folks say,—­yes, my Lord Roxmouth!—­I believe he would,—­and if he did, I’m certain he would speak straight, and not whisper a few small poisonous lies round the corner!  For I think”—­and here the train of her reflections wandered away from her aunt and her lordly wooer altogether, “yes,—­I think Mr. Walden is a good man!  I was not quite sure about him when I first met him,—­I thought his eyes seemed deceitful,—­so many parsons’ eyes are!—­but I looked well into them to-day,—­and they’re not the usual eyes of a parson at all,—­they’re just the eyes of a British sailor who has watched rough seas all his life,—­and such eyes are always true!”

XV

On the following Monday afternoon Cicely Bourne, to whom Walden had so successfully telegraphed Maryllia’s commands, arrived.  She was rather an odd-looking young person.  Her long thin legs were much too long for the shortness of her black cashmere frock, which was made ‘en demoiselle,’ after the fashion adhered to in French convents, where girls are compelled to look as ugly as possible, in order that they may eschew the sin of personal vanity,—­her hair, of a rich raven black, was plaited in a stiff thick braid resembling a Chinese pigtail, and was fastened at the end with a bow of ribbon,—­and a pair of wonderfully brilliant dark eyes flashed under her arching brows, suggesting something weird and witchlike in their roving glances, and giving an almost uncanny expression to her small, sallow face.  But she was full of the most exuberant vitality,—­she sparkled all over with it and seemed to exhale it in the mere act of breathing.  Brimful of delight at the prospect of spending the whole summer with her friend and patroness, to whom she owed everything, and whom she adored with passionate admiration and gratitude, she dashed into the old-world silence and solitude of Abbot’s Manor like a wild wave of the sea, crested with sunshine and bubbling over with ripples of mirth.  Her incessant chatter and laughter awoke the long-hushed echoes of the ancient house to responsive gaiety,—­and every pale lingering shadow of dullness or loneliness fled away from the exhilarating effect of her presence, which acted at once as a stimulant and charm to Maryllia, who welcomed her arrival with affectionate enthusiasm.

“But oh, my dear!” she exclaimed—­“What a little school-guy they have made of you!  You must have grown taller, surely, since November when I saw you last?  Your frock is ever so much too short!”

“I don’t think I’ve grown a bit,”—­said Cicely, glancing down at her own legs disparagingly—­“But my frock wore shabby at the bottom, and the nuns had a fresh hem turned up all round.  That reduced its length by a couple of inches at least.  I told them as modestly as I could that my ankles were too vastily exposed, but they said it didn’t matter, as I was only a day-boarder.”

Maryllia’s eyebrows went up perplexedly.