Meanwhile Laura had but found in the whole affair one more amusement and
excitement added to the many that, according to her, Potter's Beach
already possessed. The dancing elfish child--who had no memory of her own
mother--had begun by taking the little old maid under her patronising
wing. She graciously allowed Augustina to make a lap for all the briny
treasures she might accumulate in the course of a breathless morning; she
rushed to give her first information whenever that encroaching monster
the sea broke down her castles. And as soon as it appeared that her papa
liked Augustina, and had a use for her, Laura at the age of eight
promptly accepted her as part of the family circle, without the smallest
touch of either sentiment or opposition. She walked gaily hand in hand
with her father to the registry office at St. Bees. The jealously hidden,
stormy little heart knew well enough that it had nothing to fear.

Then came many quiet years at Cambridge. Augustina spoke no more of her
brother, and apparently let her old creed slip. She conformed herself
wholly to her husband's ways,--a little colourless thread on the stream
of academic life, slightly regarded, and generally silent out of doors,
but at home a gentle, foolish, and often voluble person, very easily made
happy by some small kindness and a few creature comforts.

Laura meanwhile grew up, and no one exactly knew how. Her education was a
thing of shreds and patches, managed by herself throughout, and
expressing her own strong will or caprice from the beginning. She put
herself to school--a day school only; and took herself away as soon as
she was tired of it. She threw herself madly into physical exercises like
dancing or skating; and excelled in most of them by virtue of a certain
wild grace, a tameless strength of spirits and will. And yet she grew up
small and pale; and it was not till she was about eighteen that she