Mrs. Chatterton gave another low, unpleasant laugh, and this time shrugged her shoulders.

“Polly dear,” said Mrs. Whitney with a smile, “say good-morning to Mrs. Chatterton, and then run away.  I will hear your wonderful plan by and by.  I shall be glad to, child,” she was guilty of whispering in the small ear.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Chatterton,” said Polly slowly, the brown eyes looking steadily into the traveled and somewhat seamed countenance before her.

“Good-morning,” and Polly found herself once more across the floor, and safely out in the hall, the door closed between them.

“Who is she?” she cried in an indignant spasm to Jasper, who ran up, and she lifted her eyes brimming over with something quite new to him.  He stopped aghast.

“Who?” he cried.  “Oh, Polly! what has happened?”

“Mrs. Chatterton.  And she looked at me—­oh!  I can’t tell you how she looked; as if I were a bug, or a hateful worm beneath her,” cried Polly, quite as much aghast at herself.  “It makes me feel horridly, Jasper—­you can’t think.”  Oh! that old”—­He stopped, pulling himself up with quite an effort.  “Has she come back—­what brought her, pray tell, so soon?”

“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Polly, laughing at his face.  “I was only in the room a moment, I think, but it seemed an age with that eyeglass, and that hateful little laugh.”

“Oh! she always sticks up that thing in her eye,” said Jasper coolly, “and she’s everlastingly ventilating that laugh on everybody.  She thinks it high-bred and elegant, but it makes people want to kill her for it.”  He looked and spoke annoyed.  “To think you fell into her clutches!” he added.

“Well, who is she?” cried Polly, smoothing down her ruffled feathers, when she saw the effect of her news on him.  “I should dearly love to know.”

“Cousin Algernon’s wife,” said Jasper briefly.

“And who is he?” cried Polly, again experiencing a shock that this dreadful person was a relative to whom due respect must be shown.

“Oh! a cousin of father’s,” said Jasper.  “He was nice, but he’s dead.”

“Oh!” said Polly.

“She’s been abroad for a good half-dozen years, and why she doesn’t stay there when everybody supposed she was going to, astonishes me,” said Jasper, after a moment.  “Well, it will not be for long, I presume, that we shall have the honor; she’ll be easily tired of America, and take herself off again.”

“She doesn’t stay in this house, does she, Jasper?” cried Polly in a tone of horror.

“No; that is, unless she chooses to, then we can’t turn her off.  She’s a relative, you know.”

“Hasn’t she any home?” asked Polly, “or any children?”

“Home?  Yes, an estate down in Bedford County?-Dunraven Lodge; but it’s all shut up, and in the hands of agents who have been trying for the half-dozen years she was abroad, to sell it for her.  She may have come back to settle down there again, there’s no telling what she will do.  In the meantime, I fancy she’ll make her headquarters here,” he said gloomily.