pleased her taste as well as her sentiment,—­and though the faintest shadow of vague wonder crossed her mind as to what she would do with her time, now that she had gained her own way and was actually all alone in the heart of the country, she did not permit such a thought to trouble her peace.  The grave tranquillity of the old house was already beginning to exert its influence on her always quick and perceptive mind,—­the dear remembrance of her father whom she had idolised, and whose sudden death had been the one awful shock of her life, came back to her now with a fresh and tender pathos.  Little incidents of her childhood and of its affection, such as she thought she had forgotten, presented themselves one by one in the faithful recording cells of her brain,—­and the more or less feverish and hurried life she had been compelled to lead under her aunt’s command and chaperonage, began to efface itself slowly, like a receding coast-line from a departing vessel.

“It is home!” she said; “And I have not been in a home for years!  Aunt Emily’s houses were never ‘home.’  And this is my home—­my very own; the home of our family for generations.  I ought to be proud of it, and I will be proud of it!  Even Aunt Emily used to say that Abbot’s Manor was a standing proof of the stuck-up pride of the Vancourts!  I’m sure I shall find plenty to do here.  I can farm my own lands and live on the profits—­if there are any!”

She laughed a little, and rising from the bed went to the window and leaned out.  A large white clematis pushed its moonlike blossom up to her face, as though asking to be kissed, and a bright red butterfly danced dreamily up and down in the late sunbeams, now poising on the ivy and anon darting off again into the mild still air.

“It’s perfectly lovely!” said Maryllia, with a little sigh of content; “And it is all my own!”

She drew her head in from the window and turned to her mirror.

“I’m getting old,” she said, surveying herself critically, and with considerable disfavour;—­“It’s all the result of society ‘pressure,’ as they call it.  There’s a line here—­and another there”—­indicating the imaginary facial defects with a small tapering forefinger—­“And I daresay I have some grey hairs, if I could only find them.”  Here she untwisted the coil at the back of her head and let it fall in a soft curling shower round her shoulders—­“Oh, yes!—­I daresay!” she went on, addressing her image in the glass; “You think it looks very pretty—­but that is only an ‘effect,’ you know!  It’s like the advertisements the photographers do for the hairdressers; ’Hair-positively-forced-to-grow-in-six-weeks’ sort of thing.  Oh, what a dear old chime!” This, as she heard the ancient clock in the square turret which overlooked the Tudor courtyard give forth a mellow tintinnabulation.  “What time is it, I wonder?” She glanced at the tiny trifle of a watch she had taken off and placed on her dressing-table.  “Quarter past seven!  I must have had a doze, after all.  I think I will ring for Nancy Pyrle”—­and she suited the action to the word; “I have not the least idea where my clothes are.”