He visited a great many West-end boarding-schools before he found one that satisfied him in every particular. Had his protégée been his daughter, or his affianced wife, he could not have been more difficult to please. He wondered at his own fastidiousness.
"I am like a child with a new toy," he thought, almost ashamed of the intense interest he felt in this unknown girl.
At last he found an establishment that pleased him; a noble old mansion at Fulham, surrounded by splendid grounds, and presided over by two maiden sisters. It was a thoroughly aristocratic seminary, and the ladies who kept it knew how to charge for the advantages of their establishment. Sir Oswald assented immediately to the Misses Beaumonts' terms, and promised to bring the expected pupil in less than a week's time.
"The young lady is a relation, I presume, Sir Oswald?" said the elder
Miss Beaumont.
"Yes," answered the baronet; "she is—a distant relative."
If he had not been standing with his back to the light, the two ladies might have seen a dusky flush suffuse his face as he pronounced these words. Never before had he told so deliberate a falsehood. But he had feared to tell the truth.
"They will never guess her secret from her manner," he thought; "and if they question her, she will know how to baffle their curiosity."
On the very day that ended the stipulated week, Honoria Milford made her appearance in Arlington Street. Sir Oswald was in his library, seated in an easy-chair before the fire-place, with a book in his hand, but with no power to concentrate his attention to its pages. He was sitting thus when the door was opened, and a servant announced—
"Miss Milford!"
Sir Oswald rose from his chair, and beheld an elegant young lady, who approached him with a graceful timidity of manner. She was simply dressed in gray merino, a black silk mantle, and a straw bonnet, trimmed with white ribbon. Nothing could have been more Quaker-like than the simplicity of this costume, and yet there was an elegance about the wearer which the baronet had seldom seen surpassed.