But Eleanor had only made the girl's acquaintance in London, just after her marriage, when Cecily was spending a season there with her aunt, Mrs.Lessingham.

Mallard's ward was then little more than fifteen; after several years of weak health, she had entered upon a vigorous maidenhood, and gave such promise of free, joyous, aspiring life as could not but strongly affect the sympathies of a woman like Eleanor.

Three years prior to that, at the time of her father's death, Cecily was living with Mrs.Elgar, a widow, and her daughter Miriam, the latter on the point of marrying (at eighteen) one Mr.Baske, a pietistic mill-owner, aged fifty.

It then seemed very doubtful whether Cecily would live to mature years; she had been motherless from infancy, and the difficulty with those who brought her up was to repress an activity of mind which seemed to be one cause of her bodily feebleness.

In those days there was a strong affection between her and Miriam Elgar, and it showed no sign of diminution in either when, on Mrs.Elgar's death, a year and a half after Miriam's marriage, Cecily passed into the care of her father's sister, a lady of moderate fortune, of parts and attainments, and with a great love of cosmopolitan life.