find this little daughter of theirs very well brought up, and much
forwarder than honest old Mysie.'

'Mysie is in perfect raptures at the notion of having a cousin here
exactly of her own age,' said Gillian. 'What she would wish is that
the two should be so much alike as to be taken for twins. I have been
trying to remember Dolores on that dreadful Sunday at the hotel, when
Uncle Maurice came to see us, just when papa was setting off for
Bombay, but it all seems confusion. I can think of nothing but a
little black, shy figure. I remember Phyllis telling me that she
thought I ought to do something to entertain her, but I could not think
of a word to say to her.'

'For which perhaps she was thankful,' said her brother.

'I am not sure. You are all too apt, when you are shy, to console
yourself with fancying that you are doing as you would be done by. It
might have worried her then perhaps, but it would have made it easier
for her to begin among us now! I am very glad her father consents to
my having her! I do hope we may make her happy.'

'Happy!' said Gillian. 'Anybody must be happy with such a number to
play with, and with you to mother her, mamma.'

'I am afraid she will not feel me much like her own mother, poor child!
But it will not be for want of the will. When I look back now I feel
sorry for myself for the early loss of my mother, for though we were
all merry enough as children and young people, there always seems to
have been a lack of something fostering and repressing. There was a
kind of desolateness in our life, though we did not understand it at