Mrs.
Gray, in a bonnet Mary had made for her and a mantle which had been Mary's gift, was in a timid rapture.

She was older by some years than she had been when Mary went to Lady Anne first, but she was far more comely.

Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been.

Several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to Walter Gray's home.
"Well," said Lady Anne, turning round, and touching Walter Gray's arm, "I have not made too bad a fairy godmother, have I, now ?" "She would never have grown so tall," Walter Gray said, with absent eyes.

He had yielded up Mary for her good, but he had never ceased to miss her.
One person who sat among the most distinguished group in the Hall looked at Mary with a lively interest.
"What a charming girl!" she said to her host, a very great person.
"I believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old Lady Anne Hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's," he responded.