HOW MARGARET PLEADS FOR THE LITTLE HOYDEN, AND WITH WHAT
ILL-SUCCESS.



Margaret Knollys, entering the room and seeing the signs of
agitation in the two faces before her, stops on the threshold.

"I am disturbing you. I can come again," says she, in her clear,
calm voice.

"No," says Mrs. Bethune abruptly.

She makes a gesture as if to keep her.

"Not at all. Not at all, dear Margaret. Pray stay, and give me a
little help," says Lady Rylton plaintively.

She pulls forward a little chair near her, as if to show Margaret
that she must say, and Miss Knollys comes quickly to her. Marian
Bethune is Lady Rylton's real niece. Margaret is her niece by
marriage.

A niece to be proud of, in spite of the fact that she is thirty
years of age and still unmarried. Her features, taken separately,
would debar her for ever from being called either pretty or
beautiful; yet there have been many in her life-time who admired
her, and three, at all events, who would have gladly given their all
to call her theirs. Of these one is dead, and one is married, and