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advantages are offered
to Pansy. I have made up my mind to adopt her. Ah, here she is. I
am just telling your worthy aunt, my dear, that you will accompany
me next week to town."
    Miss
Temperance Piper gazes from one to the other in dazed bewildered
silence. She looks so white that Pansy is a little frightened and
clasps her in her arms. "Auntie, if you refuse your consent I will
never, never leave you. But I am so tired of this humdrum life, and
I should so like to see the world a little, and above all become a
great and famous violinist. If you will let me go, dear, darling
Aunt Temperance, I will write to you constantly, and come every now
and then to see you, and I will take care that you are rich and
happy -- your cares will be over for ever."
    "I beg pardon,
Mrs. Adair," says Miss Piper, tremblingly, "my head is all
confused. I don't think I understand."
    "I offer,"
says Mrs. Adair, "to adopt your niece, to treat her in all respects
as belonging to me, and to care for her future. She will receive
educational and social advantages that would be impossible here,
and that will prove costly and expensive. It may be that she will
even be my heiress if our attachment deepens with coming years. All
I require in return is that she shall belong to me absolutely and
entirely. She is to take my surname of Adair. She is to give up all
connection with Polesheaton, and entirely sever herself from
relations in a sphere quite removed from that which will be her
own."
    "Do you
understand, Pansy?" says Miss Piper, in tones a little sharper than
her usual gentle accents. "This lady offers to adopt you, and make
you rich and clever and a grand lady, but you are to have nothing
more to do with Polesheaton. You are to give up your old home and
your Aunt Temperance for ever."
    "Yes, that is
my meaning," says Mrs. Adair, decisively. "It never answers for
young people to belong to two different conditions of life. If you
wish to enter society, Pansy, you must turn your back completely on
your past. At the same time, to render Miss Piper's circumstances
more comfortable, I intend to present her, on your departure, with
a cheque for fifty pounds."
    "Begging your
pardon, ma'am, I will take not so much as a farthing from you,"
says the little spinster lady, her breath coming and going rapidly.
"I see your offer is for my Pansy's good, but I beg you will not
offer money to make up for my child. I have loved her like my own,
and will not stand in her way now. Pansy, my darling, my child, you
must choose for yourself. It's a choice soon settled one way or the
other -- Polesheaton or society; your aunt and Deb and the shop, or
becoming one of the quality."
    Pansy takes
her aunt in her arms and presses tender, tearful kisses upon the
prematurely wrinkled cheeks; but before Mrs. Adair goes to the
dentist the choice is made.
    "I want to
rise in life, Aunt Temperance," says Pansy. "I cannot endure this
dull, common life at Polesheaton. I love you with all my heart, but
I never shall have such a choice again. I think it would be wicked
to turn my back on Mrs. Adair's most generous offer. It would be
like flying in the face of Providence."

Chapter
4
    Brilliant Prospects
    THE last week
at Polesheaton is a restless, uncomfortable one, and Pansy heartily
wishes it over. Deb is in a constant state of wonder, admiration,
and incredulity, and it annoys her young mistress to find that her
admission into fashionable circles should excite such astonishment
around. All Polesheaton seems to gaze after her open mouthed and
open eyed when she ventures down the High Street.
    "Are
you really going to be a lady, Pansy?"
asks Ellen Sotham, the farmer's daughter, who has made an errand
with her sister to the post office on purpose to interview
Pansy.
    "I am adopted
by Mrs. Adair, of Silverbeach Manor -- the lady at The Grange,"
says Pansy, somewhat stiffly.
    A short time
ago she enjoyed a chat with Ellen Sotham, who was sent by admiring
parents to the "finishing school" in