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registered a very low figure indeed before she could have taken refuge in Sally's kitchen-at any other time than on Saturday afternoon, immediately after the weekly cleaning. Tea was on the table. It had stood there since five o'clock.

Mona sighed again.

"If one divides servants," she said, "into three classes— those who can be taught to obey orders in the spirit, those who can be taught to obey orders in the letter, and those who cannot be taught to obey orders at all-Sally is a bad second, with an occasional strong tendency to lapse into the third. I wish she had seen fit to lapse into the third tonight."

She pushed aside the cold buttered toast, helped herself to overdrawn tea, and glanced with a shiver at the shavings in the grate. In another moment her sorrows were forgotten. Leaning against the glass shade of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, smiling at her across the room, stood a fair, fat, friendly budget in Lady Munro's handwriting.

"Gaudeamus igitur!" Mona seized the tea-cosy, tossed it up to the ceiling, and caught it again with an affectionate squeeze.

How delightful that the letter should come when she was alone! Now she could get the very maximum of enjoyment out of it. She stalked it stealthily, lest it should “vanish into thin air" before her eyes, took hold of it gingerly, examined the post-mark, smelt the faint perfume which, more than anything else, reminded her of the beautiful gracious woman in the rooms at Gloucester Place, and then opened the envelope carefully with her penknife.

She took out the contents, and arranged her three treasures on the table. Yes, there were three. They had all written. There was Sir Douglas's "My dear girl"; Lady Munro's "My darling Mona"; and Evelyn's "My very own dearest friend."

They were not clever letters at all, but they were affectionate and characteristic; and Mona laughed and cried over

them, as she sat curled up in the corner of the stiff unyielding sofa. Sir Douglas was bluff and fatherly, and to the point. Lady Munro underlined every word that she would have emphasised in speaking. "Douglas was so dull and so cross after we parted from you. In fact even now he is constantly talking of you-constantly." Evelyn gave a detailed circumstantial account of all they had done since Mona had left them,-an account interspersed with many protestations of affection. "Mother and I start for Cannes almost immediately," she wrote. "Of course Father cannot be induced to leave Scotland as long as there is a bird on the moors. Write me long letters as often as ever you can. You do write such lovely letters." All three reminded Mona repeatedly of her promise to spend the whole of next summer with them somewhere.

"How good they are!" Mona kept repeating. "How good they are!"

When Mona was young, like every well-conducted schoolgirl, she had formed passionate attachments, and had nearly broken her heart when "eternal friendships" failed. "I will expect no friendship, no constancy in life," she had said. "I will remember that here I have no continuing city even in the hearts of the people I love. I will hold life and love with a loose grasp."

And even now, when increasing years were making her more healthily human, true friendship and constancy had invariably called out a feeling of glad surprise. At every turn the world was proving kinder to her than she had dared to hope.

She was still deep in the letters when her cousin came home.

"Well," said Rachel, "I've just heard a queer thing. You know the work I had last week, teaching Mrs Robertson the stitch for that tidy? Well, she had some friends in to tea last night, and she never asked me! Did you ever hear the like of that? She thinks she's just going to get her use out of me!"

"I expect, dear," said Mona, "that the stitch proved more than she could manage after all, and she was afraid to confess it."

"Well, I never did know any one so slow at the crochet," said Rachel resentfully, releasing the wonderful red cap from its basket. "She may look for some other body to help her the next time. But we'd better take our porridge and be off to our beds, if we're going to St Rules to-morrow."

Mona read her letters once more in her own room, and then another thought asserted itself unexpectedly.

"I wish with all my heart that I could have shown him the sketch-book, and made a clean breast of it," she said to her trusty friend in the glass; "and yet "-her attitude changed "why should he stand on a different footing from everybody else?"

The face in the glass looked back defiantly, and did not seem prepared with any answer.

CHAPTER XX.

ST RULES.

When Mona appeared at the breakfast-table next morning, Rachel regarded her with critical dissatisfaction.

"I wonder you don't get tired of that dress," she said, as she poured out the tea- from the brown teapot. "It's very nice of course, and as good as new, but changes are lightsome, and one would think you would sometimes prefer to wear something more youthful-like. Pity your print's at the wash."

Mona looked out of the window.

"I have another," she said, "if you think it won't rain." "Oh no. And besides, you can take your waterproof."

"It's not so much that I mind getting anything spoiled, as that I hate to be dressed unsuitably; but I do think it is going to be a beautiful day."

She left the room as soon as she had finished breakfast, and returned in about ten minutes.

"A gavotte in cream and gold," she said, making a low curtsey. "I hope it meets with your approval."

"My word!" said Rachel, “you do look the lady! and it's cheap stuff too. Why, I declare you would pass for a beauty if you took the trouble to dress well. It's wonderful how you become that hat!"

"Took a little trouble to dress well!" ejaculated Mona mentally. "A nice thing to say to a woman who makes dress her first aim in life!"

They walked in to Kirkstoun, and there took the coach. Mona would fain have gone outside, but Rachel wanted to point out the lions they passed on the way, and she considered that they got their "penny's worth" better inside. Fortunately there were not many passengers, and Mona succeeded in placing herself on the windward side of two fishwives.

About noon they reached St Rules, and wandered rather aimlessly through the streets, paying incidental visits to the various places of note. Rachel had about as much idea of acting the part of cicerone as she had of trimming hats, or making scones, or keeping shop, or indeed of doing any thing useful; and she was in a constant state of nervous perturbation, lest some officious guide should force his services upon them, and then expect a gratuity.

The season was over and the visitors were few, so Mona's pretty gown attracted not a little attention. Simple as it was, she regretted fifty times that she had put it on; Rachel's dress would have escaped notice but for the contrast between them.

It was positively a welcome interlude when they arrived at the pastry-cook's; but at the door Rachel stood aside obsequiously, to give place to a lady who came up behind

them "in her carriage;" and then gave her own order in a shamefaced undertone, as if she had no right to make use of the shop at the same moment as so distinguished a personPoor Mona! She thought once more of Lady Munro, and she sighed.

age.

"The only other thing that we really need to see," said Rachel, wiping her hands on a crumpled paper bag that happened to lie beside her, "is the Castle. I'll be glad to rest my legs a bit, while you run round and look about you."

She had at least shown her good sense in reserving the Castle as a bonne bouche. Mona's irritation vanished as she stood in the enclosure and saw the velvety green turf under foot, the broad blue sky overhead, the bold outline of ruined masonry round about, and the "white horses" riding in on the rugged coast below. She was wandering hither and thither, examining every nook and cranny, when suddenly, in an out-of-the-way corner she came upon a young man and a girl in earnest conversation. The girl started and turned her back, and Mona left them in peace.

"Surely I have seen that face before," she thought, "and not very long ago. I know! It is that silly little minx, Matilda Cookson. I hope the young man is up to no mischief."

In another moment the "silly little minx was swept out of her mind; for, standing on a grassy knoll, laughing and talking with Rachel, she saw Dr Dudley.

An instinctive rush of surprise and pleasure, a feeling of uneasiness at the thought of what Rachel might be saying, a sense of satisfaction in her own fresh girlish gown,-all these passed through Mona's mind, as she crossed the open space in the sunshine.

"Well," said Dudley, as she joined them, "this can give a point or two even to Castle Maclean."

"Do you think so?" she responded gravely. "That is high praise"

He laughed. "Have you seen that gruesome dungeon?"

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