"This is Maureen."
"Well," said Daisy, "wasn't mother right? Don't you remember, Henny-penny, how she used to write us pages about the detestable Maureen, and here she is in the flesh, as stuck-up as you please, and in all those fine feathers, too. I can give a shrewd guess as to whose money paid for those!"
There was a solemn silence in the great hall, then the Rector laid one strong, firm hand on Daisy's shoulder and the other on Henrietta's.
"My dears," he said, "you are strangers to us, but we wish, if possible, to be good to you. It is our intention, if possible, to be good, but you must not speak against any of my family, and in especial you must not speak against Maureen. She is the joy of my life and my greatest earthly comfort. Remember, girls, I am now in the position of your step-father and your guardian and can do with you just what I please.—Maureen, darling, take the girls up to their bedroom, and see that they have every comfort.—We shall have tea in the hall in about half an hour, and then the Colonel will come to take Maureen for her customary ride."
There was something very stern and solemn in the Rector's words, and even Daisy was subdued for the moment.
Maureen, who had not shed a tear or shown a scrap of apparent emotion, now came forward and gravely without any smile said in her distinct, sweet voice: "Shall I take you to your room?—Kitty, dear, go and have a ride on daddy's shoulder."
"He's my daddy as well as the sprite's!" cried out the irrepressible Daisy. "That's one comfort. Well, I suppose we may as well go with you, interloper." The last word she dropped as she did not wish her step-father to hear her.
Maureen had taken great pains with the late Mrs. O'Brien's room. She had taken away the large double bed and had substituted two little oak bedsteads, and the room was really quite charming, with its good furniture, its flowers, and wide-open windows, which let in the delicious air, that blew straight from the Atlantic, not two miles away.
"How shivering—how bitter!" cried Daisy. "For goodness' sake, shut that window; I'll catch my death—I know I shall. What a great empty room! Nothing in it to speak of. The only decent person I have seen since I entered the house is the boy they call Dominic. I am going to have a try and flirt with him. It will get my hand in for proper practice by-and-by."