Miss Farringdon would have been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess.
"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing ?" Miss Anne's life was one long advertisement of other people's virtues.

"She used to be somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the servants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round the rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to remind her." "It is so, and I rejoice.

Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave fault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her habit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very nose without noticing it.

It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the child is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she used to be." Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent had she known that, for the time being, her _protegee_ had assumed the role of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game.

This, however, was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might also be made picturesque.