“What do you see?” asked Mrs. Johnson, as Grace, on tip-toe, peered into what seemed to be a solitary cell, void of furniture of every kind, save a little cot, corresponding in size with the fairy bed in the recess, but in naught else resembling it, for its coverings were of the coarsest, strongest materials, and the pillows scanty and small.

Acting from a sudden impulse, Grace determined not to tell Mrs. Johnson what she saw, and stepping down from the table, which she quickly rolled back to its place, she said,

“It’s nothing but a closet, where, I dare say, Mr. St. Claire will keep his clothes when he occupies his den.  You must not let any one else in here, for Arthur might be offended.”

Mrs. Johnson promised obedience, and turning the rusty key, followed her visitor down the two long flights of stairs, she, returning to her duties, while Grace went to the pleasant library, where, with her hat and whip upon the floor, Edith sat reading the book she had ventured to take from the well-filled shelves, and in which she had been so absorbed as not to hear the slight rustling in the adjoining room, where a young man was standing in the enclosure of the deep bay window, and gazing intently at her.  He had heard from Mrs. Johnson’s daughter that some ladies were going over the house, and not caring to meet them, he stepped into the recess of the window just as Edith entered the library.  As the eye of the stranger fell upon her, he came near uttering an exclamation of surprise that anything so graceful, so queenly, and withal so wondrously beautiful, should be found in Shannondale, which, with the city ideas still clinging to him, seemed like an out-of-the-way place, where the girls were buxom, good-natured and hearty, just as he remembered Kitty Maynard to have been, and not at all like this creature of rare loveliness sitting there before him, her head inclined gracefully to the volume she was reading, and showing to good advantage her magnificent hair.

“Who can she be?” he thought, and a thrill of unwonted admiration ran through his veins as Edith raised for a moment her large eyes of midnight blackness, and from his hiding-place he saw how soft and mild they were in their expression, “Can Grace have spirited to her retreat some fair nymph for company?  Hark!  I hear her voice, and now for the solution of the mystery.”

Standing back a little further, so as to escape observation, the young man waited till Grace Atherton came near.

“Here you are,” she said, “poring over a book as usual.  I should suppose you’d had enough of that to do in reading to Mr. Harrington—­German Philosophy, too!  Will wonders never cease?  Arthur was right, I declare, when he dubbed you Metaphysics!”

“Edith Hastings!” The young man said it beneath his breath, while he involuntarily made a motion forward.

“Can it be possible, and yet now that I know it, I see the little black-eyed elf in every feature.  Well may the blind man be proud of his protege.  She might grace the saloons of Versailles, and rival the Empress herself!”