Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/22

 her. She s made herself useful—almost indispensable in a thousand ways, little and big; and not only is she pretty and clever, as you say, but she is good. A most unusual girl."

"I should like to have you as my champion, if I needed one," laughed Nina Forestier.

"Nora doesn't need a champion, though," protested Lady Hereward. "Nobody is oppressing her. Nobody is unjust to her. On the contrary, everybody is very good and considerate. I am just as fond of her as ever, though I am hurt, and think I have a right to be hurt, because she has entirely changed to me in the last two months. It isn't my fault that she fell in love with the one most undesirable man in the world—her world, anyhow; and he being what he is, it isn't my fault that my very love for the girl prevented me from handing her over to him with my blessing."

"Milly is quite right, isn't she, Sir Ian?" said Mrs. Forestier, soothingly, seeing, or fancying she saw, that tears were not far from her friend's eyes.

"Quite right," responded Sir Ian, smiling at his wife. "She usually is right. By the way, she has brought back a present for all her pets in the village, from old bodies in their second childhood, to young bodies just beginning their first." "She would!" exclaimed Nina Forestier, aware that the subject was changed. "How they all worship her! But then, as I said, everybody does."