"Who was that pale, blue-eyed fairy I met when I entered?"
"Eveleen Danton."
"Give her my best regards—Doctor Frank's. She will be rather pretty, I think; and if Miss Kate snubs me, perhaps I shall fall back on Miss Eveleen. It seems to me I should like to get into so great a family. Once more, bon soir, sister mine, and pleasant dreams."
He was gone this time for good. His sister stood in the doorway, and watched the white horse and its tall, dark rider vanish under the tossing trees.
CHAPTER II.
KATE DANTON.
Grace went slowly back to the parlour and stood looking thoughtfully into the fire. It was pleasant in that pleasant parlour, bright with the illumination of lamp and fire—doubly pleasant in contrast with the tumult of wind and rain without. Very pleasant to Grace, and she sighed wearily as she looked up from the ruby coals to the radiant face smiling down from over the mantel.
"You will be mistress to-morrow," she thought; "the place I have held for the last four years is yours from to-night. Beautiful as a queen. What will your reign be like, I wonder?"
She drew up the arm-chair her brother had vacated and sat down, her thoughts drifting backward to the past. Backward four years, and she saw herself, a penniless orphan, dependent on the bounty of that miserly Uncle Roosevelt in Montreal. She saw again the stately gentleman who came to her, and told her he was her father's third cousin, Captain Danton, of Danton Hall. She had never seen him before; but she had heard of her wealthy cousin from childhood, and knew his history. She knew he had married in early youth an English lady, who had died ten years after, leaving four children—a son, Henry, and three daughters, Katherine, Rosina and Eveleen. The son, wild and wayward all his life, broke loose at the age of twenty, forged his father's name, and fled to New York, married an actress, got into a gambling affray, and was stabbed. That was the end of him. The eldest daughter, born in England, had been brought up by her maternal grandmother, who was rich, and whose heiress she was to be. Mrs. Danton and her two youngest children resided at the Hall, while the Captain was mostly absent. After her death, a Canadian lady had taken charge of the house and Captain Danton's daughters. All this Grace knew, and was quite unprepared to see her distant kinsman, and to hear that the Canadian lady had married and left, and that she was solicited to take her place. The Captain's terms were so generous that Grace accepted at once; and, a week after, was domesticated at the Hall, housekeeper and companion to his daughters.