hadn't they caught him at his pranks on the floor? Hadn't they seen his haggard face when the doctor pronounced it diphtheria? Hadn't they seen him carry her downstairs in his own arms on the first day it was allowed? Hadn't they seen him helping her with her lessons, at night,—solving her complex problems in his head while she struggled over columns of figures, and waiting at the end of that tortuous road with a smile on his gaunt face, and the right answer, to prove hers right or wrong? But in languages, Sir Peter was left at the post. Her master in French was astonished until he learned her mother's name,—by accident, for it was rarely spoken in that house. The dead languages were alive to her, too. The shelves in her study-room, upstairs, contained Sir Peter's old "classics," prettily rebound. The commission went to Mr. Rowlandson; the execution was Rivière's. Sir Peter had scarcely looked into them since the old days at Cambridge.

Sunlight in the house, indeed. Her sweet voice, in sudden song, might be heard at any moment of the day; or the ripple of her piano; or her gay laughter, musical as the joyous notes of a bird.

She had her intent of them all. Even the determined mind of Burbage, stern-featured and steel-spectacled, she moulded to a plastic acquiescence with her own sweet will. In extreme urgency, when Burbage was very firm, indeed, Phyllis had a way of referring to dear Farquharson. Burbage learned to anticipate this by yielding in the nick of time.

By the way, they had not found a trace of Farquharson.

Several short, sharp battles she had with Sir Peter; the cause, in each instance, the same. He did not try to disguise his desire that she should forget her mother. The first encounter between them took place within a year of her home-coming.

"If I cannot remember my darling, darling mamma in your house, Uncle Peter, I shall not stay here," she declared. "I will go away and never, never come back any more. And then you would be sorry."

Sir Peter compromised with irrelevant sweets. But he saw she was terribly in earnest, for such a little girl.

From time to time a similar incident disturbed the loving relationship between them; a relationship that was perfect otherwise, in confidence, sincerity and affection.

When she was eighteen, some one told her she began to look like her mother.

"God forbid!" said Sir Peter, when 

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