my stepmother.'

'That amounts to very little. All I can tell you is, that she is the
daughter of a gentleman, highly accomplished, without money, and
four-and-twenty years of age. She was travelling as companion to an
elderly lady when your father met her in a picture-gallery at
Florence. He knew the old lady, I believe, and by that means became
acquainted with the younger one.'

'Only four-and-twenty! only four years older than I!'

'Rather young, is it not? but when a man of your father's age makes
a second marriage, he is apt to marry a young woman. Of course this
is quite a love-match.'

'Yes, quite a love-match,' Milly repeated, with a sigh.

I knew she could not help that natural pang of jealousy, as she
thought how she and her father had once been all the world to each
other. She had told me so often of their happy companionship, the
perfect confidence that had existed between them.

Julian Stormont sat talking to her--and a little, a very little, to
me--for about half an hour longer, and then departed. He was to sleep
at Fendale, and go back to North Shields next morning. He was his
uncle's right hand in the business, Milly told me; and from the
little I had seen of him I could fancy him a power in any sphere.

'Papa has a very high opinion of him,' she said, when we were
talking of him after he had left us.