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Title: In love's hands

or, For her heart's sake

Author: Bertha M. Clay

Release date: August 31, 2024 [eBook #74340]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith

Credits: Demian Katz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN LOVE'S HANDS ***

BERTHA CLAY LIBRARY             No. 370

In Love’s Hands

BY

BERTHA

M.

CLAY

STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

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BERTHA CLAY LIBRARY

ISSUED SEMI-MONTHLY.

The only complete line of Bertha M. Clay’s stories. Many of these titles are copyrighted and cannot be found in any other edition.

ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT

TO THE PUBLIC:—These books are sold by news dealers everywhere. If your dealer does not keep them, and will not get them for you, send direct to the publishers, in which case four cents must be added to the price per copy to cover postage.

1—A Bitter Atonement.

2—Dora Thorne.

3—A Golden Heart.

4—Lord Lisle’s Daughter.

5—The Mystery of Colde Fell; or, “Not Proven.”

6—Diana’s Discipline; or, Sunshine and Roses.

7—A Dark Marriage Morn.

8—Hilda’s Lover; or, The False Vow; or, Lady Hutton’s Ward.

9—Her Mother’s Sin; or, A Bright Wedding Day.

10—One Against Many.

11—For Another’s Sin; or, A Struggle for Love.

12—At War With Herself.

13—Evelyn’s Folly.

14—A Haunted Life.

15—Lady Damer’s Secret.

16—His Wife’s Judgment.

17—Lady Castlemaine’s Divorce; or, Put Asunder.

19—Two Fair Women; or, Which Loved Him Best?

21—Wife in Name Only.

22—The Sin of a Lifetime.

23—The World Between Them.

24—Prince Charlie’s Daughter.

25—A Thorn in Her Heart.

26—A Struggle for a Ring.

27—The Shadow of a Sin.

28—A Rose in Thorns.

29—A Woman’s Love Story.

30—The Romance of a Black Veil.

31—Redeemed by Love; or, Love’s Conflict; or, Love Works Wonders.

32—Lord Lynne’s Choice.

33—Set in Diamonds.

34—The Romance of a Young Girl; or, The Heiress of Hill-drop.

35—A Woman’s War.

36—On Her Wedding Morn, and Her Only Sin.

37—Weaker Than a Woman.

38—Love’s Warfare.

40—A Nameless Sin.

41—A Mad Love.

42—Hilary’s Folly; or, Her Marriage Vow.

43—Madolin’s Lover.

44—The Belle of Lynn; or, The Miller’s Daughter.

45—Lover and Husband.

46—Beauty’s Marriage, and Between Two Sins.

47—The Duke’s Secret.

48—Her Second Love.

49—Addie’s Husband, and Arnold’s Promise.

50—A True Magdalen; or, One False Step.

51—For a Woman’s Honor.

52—Claribel’s Love Story; or, Love’s Hidden Depths.

53—A Fiery Ordeal.

54—The Gipsy’s Daughter.

55—Golden Gates.

56—The Squire’s Darling, and Walter’s Wooing.

57—Violet Lisle.

58—Griselda.

59—One False Step.

60—A Heart’s Idol.

61—The Earl’s Error, and Letty Leigh.

63—Another Woman’s Husband.

64—Wedded and Parted, and Fair But False.

65—His Perfect Trust.

66—Gladys Greye.

67—In Love’s Crucible.

68—’Twixt Love and Hate.

69—Fair But Faithless.

70—A Heart’s Bitterness.

71—Marjorie Deane.

72—Between Two Hearts.

73—Her Martyrdom.

74—Thorns and Orange Blossoms.

75—A Bitter Bondage.

76—A Guiding Star.

77—A Fair Mystery.

78—Another Man’s Wife.

79—An Ideal Love.

80—The Earl’s Atonement.

81—Between Two Loves.

82—A Dead Heart, and Love for a Day.

83—A Fatal Dower.

84—Lady Latimer’s Escape, and Other Stories.

85—A Woman’s Error.

86—Guelda.

87—Beyond Pardon.

88—If Love Be Love.

89—A Coquette’s Conquest.

90—In Cupid’s Net, and So Near and Yet So Far.

91—Under a Shadow.

92—At Any Cost, and A Modern Cinderella.

94—Margery Daw.

95—A Woman’s Temptation.

96—The Actor’s Ward.

97—Repented at Leisure.

98—James Gordon’s Wife.

99—For Life and Love, and More Bitter Than Death.

100—In Shallow Waters.

101—A Broken Wedding Ring.

102—Dream Faces.

103—Two Kisses, and The Fatal Lilies.

105—A Hidden Terror.

106—Wedded Hands.

107—From Out the Gloom.

108—Her First Love.

109—A Bitter Reckoning.

110—Thrown on the World.

111—Irene’s Vow.

112—His Wedded Wife.

113—Lord Elesmere’s Wife.

114—A Woman’s Vengeance.

115—A Queen Amongst Women and An Unnatural Bondage.

116—The Queen of the County.

117—A Struggle for the Right.

118—The Paths of Love.

119—Blossom and Fruit.

120—The Story of an Error.

121—The White Witch.

123—Lady Muriel’s Secret.

124—The Hidden Sin.

125—For a Dream’s Sake.

126—The Gambler’s Wife.

127—A Great Mistake.

128—Society’s Verdict.

129—Lady Gwendoline’s Dream.

130—The Rival Heiresses.

131—A Bride from the Sea, and Other Stories.

132—A Woman’s Trust.

133—A Dream of Love.

134—The Sins of the Father.

135—For Love of Her.

136—A Loving Maid.

137—A Heart of Gold.

138—The Price of a Bride.

139—Love in a Mask.

140—A Woman’s Witchery.

141—The Burden of a Secret.

142—One Woman’s Sin.

143—How Will It End?

144—The Hand Without a Wedding Ring.

145—A Sinful Secret.

146—Lady Marchmont’s Widowhood.

147—The Broken Trust.

148—Lady Ethel’s Whim.

149—A Wife’s Peril.

150—The Tragedy of Lime Hall.

151—Lady Ona’s Sin.

152—A Bitter Courtship.

153—A Tragedy of Love and Hate.

154—A Stolen Heart.

155—Every Inch a Queen.

156—A Maid’s Misery.

157—Love’s Redemption.

158—The Sunshine of His Life.

159—The Lost Lady of Haddon.

160—The Love of Lady Aurelia.

161—His Great Temptation.

162—An Evil Heart.

163—Gladys’ Wedding Day.

164—Lost for Love.

165—On With the New Love.

168—A Fateful Passion.

169—A Captive Heart.

170—A Deceptive Lover.

171—An Untold Passion.

172—A Purchased Love.

173—The Queen of His Soul.

174—A Pilgrim of Love.

175—The Girl of His Heart.

176—A Wife’s Devotion.

177—The Price of Love.

178—When Love and Hate Conflict.

180—A Misguided Love.

181—The Chains of Jealousy.

182—A Loveless Engagement.

183—A Heart’s Worship.

184—A Queen Triumphant.

185—Between Love and Ambition.

186—True Love’s Reward.

187—A Poisoned Heart.

188—What It Cost Her.

189—Paying the Penalty.

190—The Old Love or the New?

191—Her Honored Name.

192—A Coquette’s Victim.

193—An Ocean of Love.

194—Sweeter Than Life.

195—For Her Heart’s Sake.

196—Her Beautiful Foe.

197—A Soul Ensnared.

198—A Heart Forlorn.

199—Strong in Her Love.

200—Fair as a Lily.

205—Her Bitter Sorrow.

210—Hester’s Husband.

215—An Artful Plotter.

228—A Vixen’s Love.

232—The Dawn of Love.

236—Love’s Coronet.

237—The Unbroken Vow.

238—Her Heart’s Hero.

239—An Exacting Love.

240—A Wild Rose.

241—In Defiance of Fate.

242—For Lack of Gold.

244—Two True Hearts.

245—Baffled by Fate.

246—Two Men and a Maid.

247—A Cruel Revenge.

248—The Flower of Love.

249—Mistress of Her Fate.

250—The Wooing of a Maid.

251—A Blighted Blossom.

252—Loved Forevermore.

253—For Old Love’s Sake.

254—Love’s Debt.

255—A Happy Conquest.

256—Tender and True.

257—The Love He Spurned.

258—Withered Flowers.

259—When Woman Wills.

260—Love’s Twilight.

261—True to His First Love.

262—Suffered in Silence.

263—A Modest Passion.

264—Beyond All Dreams.

265—Loved and Lost.

266—The Bride of the Manor.

267—Love, the Avenger.

268—Wedded at Dawn.

269—A Shattered Romance.

270—With Love at the Helm.

271—Humbled Pride.

272—Love Finds a Way.

273—An Ardent Wooing.

274—Love Grown Cold.

275—Love Hath Wings.

276—When Hot Tears Flow.

277—The Wages of Deceit.

278—Love and the World.

279—Love’s Sweet Hour.

280—Faithful and True.

281—Sunshine and Shadow.

282—For Love or Wealth?

283—A Crown of Faith.

284—The Harvest of Sin.

285—A Secret Sorrow.

286—In Quest of Love.

287—Beyond Atonement.

288—A Girl’s Awakening.

289—The Hero of Her Dreams.

290—Love’s Burden.

291—Only a Flirt.

292—When Love is Kind.

293—An Elusive Lover.

294—The Hour of Temptation.

295—Where Love Leads.

296—Her Struggle With Love.

297—In Spite of Fate.

298—Can This Be Love?

299—The Love of His Youth.

300—Enchained by Passion.

301—The New Love or the Old?

302—At Her Heart’s Command.

303—Cast Upon His Care.

304—All Else Forgot.

305—Sinner or Victim?

307—Answered in Jest.

308—Her Heart’s Problem.

309—Rich in His Love.

310—For Better, For Worse.

311—Love’s Caprice.

312—When Hearts Are Young.

314—In the Golden City.

315—A Love Victorious.

316—Her Heart’s Delight.

317—The Heart of His Heart.

318—Even This Sacrifice.

319—Love’s Crown Jewel.

320—Suffered in Vain.

321—In Love’s Bondage.

322—Lady Viola’s Secret.

323—Adrift on Love’s Tide.

324—The Quest of His Heart.

325—Under Cupid’s Seal.

326—Earlescourt’s Love.

327—Dearer Than Life.

328—Toward Love’s Goal.

329—Her Heart’s Surrender.

330—Tempted to Forget.

331—The Love That Blinds.

332—A Daughter of Misfortune.

333—When False Tongues Speak.

334—A Tempting Offer.

335—With Love’s Strong Bonds.

336—That Plain Little Girl.

337—And This is Love!

338—The Secret of Estcourt.

339—For His Love’s Sake.

340—Outside Love’s Door.

341—At Love’s Fountain.

342—A Lucky Girl.

343—A Dream Come True.

344—By Love’s Order.

345—Fettered for Life.

346—Beyond the Shadow.

347—The Love That Won.

348—Fair to Look Upon.

349—A Daughter of Eve.

350—When Cupid Frowns.

351—The Wiles of Love.

352—What the World Said.

353—Mabel and May.

354—Her Love and His.

355—A Captive Fairy.

356—Her Sacred Trust.

357—A Child of Caprice.

358—He Dared to Love.

359—While the World Scoffed.

360—On Love’s Highway.

361—One of Love’s Slaves.

362—The Lure of the Flame.

363—A Love in the Balance.

364—A Woman of Whims.

365—In a Siren’s Web.

366—The Tie That Binds.

367—Love’s Harsh Mandate.

368—Love’s Carnival.

369—With Heart and Voice.

370—In Love’s Hands.

371—Hearts of Oak.

372—A Garland of Love.

373—Among Love’s Briers.

374—Love Never Fails.

375—The Other Man’s Choice.

376—A Lady of Quality.

377—On Love’s Demand.

378—A Fugitive from Love.

379—His Sweetheart’s Promise.

380—The Schoolgirl Bride.

381—Her One Ambition.

382—Love for Love.

383—His Fault or Hers?

384—New Loves for Old.

385—Her Proudest Possession.

386—Cupid Always Wins.

387—Love is Life Indeed.

388—When Scorn Greets Love.

389—Love’s Potent Charm.

390—By Love Alone.

391—When Love Conspires.

392—No Thought of Harm.

393—Cupid’s Prank.

394—A Sad Awakening.

395—What Could She Do?

396—Sharing His Burden.

397—Steadfast in Her Love.

398—A Love Despised.

399—One Life, One Love.

400—When Hope is Lost.

401—A Heart Unclaimed.

402—His Dearest Wish.

403—Her Cup of Sorrow.

404—When Love is Curbed.

405—A Pitiful Mistake.

406—A Love Profound.

407—A Bitter Sacrifice.

408—What Love is Worth.

409—When Life’s Roses Bloom.

410—Her Only Choice.

411—Forged on Love’s Anvil.

412—She Hated Him!

413—When Love’s Charm is Broken.

414—Led by Destiny.

415—When Others Sneered.

416—Golden Fetters.

417—The Love That Prospered.

418—The Song of the Siren.

419—Love’s Gentle Whisper.

420—The Girl Who Won.

421—The Love That Was Stifled.

422—The Love of a Lifetime.

423—Her One Mistake.

424—At War With Fate.

425—When Love Lures.

426—’Twixt Wealth and Want.

427—Love’s Pleasant Dreams.

428—Sir John’s Heiress.

429—A Terrible Mistake.

430—The Eyes of Jealousy.

431—The Romance of a Business Girl.

432—Was He the Man?

433—The Master of Tredcroft.

434—The Deverell Heritage.

435—The Swoop of the Vulture.

436—A Phantom of the Past.

437—A Fleet of Dreams.

438—Love and Reason.

Published during January, 1914.

439—Held in Bondage.

440—As the Ivy Loves the Oak.

Published during February, 1914.

441—Love Against Hate.

442—His Cross of Honor.

Published during March, 1914.

443—Love Everlasting.

444—Let the Heart Decide.

Published during April, 1914.

445—Love Beyond Price.

446—An Uncounted Cost.

Published during May, 1914.

447—Behind Love’s Veil.

448—Fate and the Girl.

Published during June, 1914.

449—Love Rules the World.

450—Her Sad Blessing.

Published during July, 1914.

451—Love’s Charity.

In order that there may be no confusion, we desire to say that the books listed above will be issued, during the respective months, in New York City and vicinity. They may not reach the readers, at a distance, promptly, on account of delays in transportation.

IN LOVE’S HANDS;

OR,

FOR HER HEART’S SAKE

BY

BERTHA M. CLAY

The only complete list of whose work, both copyrighted and not, is contained in the BERTHA CLAY LIBRARY, published by Street & Smith.

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IN LOVE’S HANDS.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. IN DEADLY PERIL.

CHAPTER II. SHADOWS.

CHAPTER III. THE LEGACY.

CHAPTER IV. THE GOVERNESSES.

CHAPTER V. AN UNPLEASANT ERRAND.

CHAPTER VI. SHATTERED HOPES.

CHAPTER VII. DESERTED.

CHAPTER VIII. A NEW HOME.

CHAPTER IX. ALONE IN THE WORLD.

CHAPTER X. MRS. WILSON.

CHAPTER XI. THE STRANGER FROM INDIA.

CHAPTER XII. FLORENCE’S PUPILS.

CHAPTER XIII. THE DISCOVERY.

CHAPTER XIV. TOO LATE!

CHAPTER XV. THE STORM.

CHAPTER XVI. A MAN OF MYSTERY.

CHAPTER XVII. THE NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH.

CHAPTER XVIII. SUSPENSE.

CHAPTER XIX. STILL A MYSTERY.

CHAPTER XX. NOT QUITE HAPPY.

CHAPTER XXI. A WHISPERED WORD.

CHAPTER XXII. A TARDY EXPLANATION.

CHAPTER XXIII. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I.

IN DEADLY PERIL.

Who that knows Northumberland has not roamed delightedly beside the lovely Coquet, that tricksome little river which sometimes murmurs softly along its rocky bed, and anon—swollen and turbid—fiercely dashes against its steep banks, rushing on toward the ocean with a force and rapidity that carries everything before it.

Those who have visited this capricious stream will remember Heriton Priory, one of the fairest and finest estates through which it wanders. Surrounded on three sides by hills which protect it from the keen winds, then sloping gently toward the river, the grounds are worthy the house, which is a fine specimen of the Tudor style of architecture. The ruins of the first priory—formerly the residence of a community of monks—still exist; and, owing to the care of their owners, are almost in as good condition as when the demesne was bestowed upon a certain Ralph de Heriton by Henry VIII.

The priory had been in the same family ever since. Succeeding generations had added to and improved the estate, until at the commencement of the present reign it fell into the hands of Mr. Richard Heriton, the last of the male branch. He, too, pulled down, and rebuilt, and altered, and this at a rate which made some of his more prudent neighbors shrug their shoulders as they counted the cost.

That the alterations were made with taste no one could deny, and at the time our story opens—that sweet, fragrant season when spring insensibly glides into summer—the priory gardens were in one flush of glowing beauty. It was literally a fairy scene, concealed from prying eyes by the towering heights which guarded and sheltered its loveliness.

A young man whom Mr. Heriton had discovered pedestrianizing in the neighborhood, and on learning that they had mutual friends in London, had hospitably brought home with him, lay at full length on the greensward beneath a drooping ash tree. Frank Dormer had fixed himself in the library to have a quiet morning’s reading; but the twitter of the birds, the sunlight, and the sweet breath of the roses, drew him forth to spend an hour of half-sad, half-pleasant idleness. He had rarely looked on so fair a scene before. He might never behold it again, for he was daily expecting orders to sail for India, where he had received an appointment in the Civil Service. An orphan from an early age—looked coldly upon by his few relatives, and bandied from school to private tutor, from private tutor to college—he had never known the real meaning of the word home until these few happy weeks he had spent at the priory.

As he lay there listening to the ripple of the river, and recalling the pleasant events of each succeeding day—the rides with Mr. Heriton to every spot within reach which was worthy a visit; the calls upon the warm-hearted, free-handed Northumbrian landowners with whom his host was acquainted; the quieter drives with Mrs. Heriton, a confirmed invalid; and the walks and gay romps with Florence, the only daughter of the house—he sighed, and shaded his eyes with his hand.

The trailing branches of the tree were gently parted, an arch face peeped from between them, and the next moment the young man’s head and shoulders were covered with a shower of flower petals.

Shaking his curly head with something of the air of a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, he started up—his melancholy thoughts all put to flight—and looked around. But the owner of the pretty, saucy face had retreated, and was nowhere to be seen, though a stifled laugh proclaimed her vicinity.

“You may as well show yourself, Miss Mischief,” exclaimed Frank, “unless, indeed, you are on the wing for a broom to sweep up this mess before Johnson sees it. He had the lawn swept not two hours ago. There’ll be a complaint laid before Mr. Heriton of Miss Florence’s untidy ways. I hope you’ll be punished with half a dozen sums in practice and a long German exercise.”

Florence emerged from her hiding place to answer him. She was a slim, delicate girl of fifteen, with eyes of so deep a blue that they were almost black, and long, wavy hair of golden brown that was carelessly tied at the back of her head with a ribbon of the same color. Although under the control of a strict governess for several hours every day, in order that she might become the accomplished young lady Mr. Heriton’s heiress ought to be, her mother’s thoughtful tenderness secured her perfect freedom for as many more. Thus Florence, brought up in the healthful seclusion of the priory—never permitted to exhibit her acquirements and receive the ill-judging admiration of visitors—was still a happy, artless child, with only enough of the woman to cherish a secret thought that if she grew up and ever consented to leave dear, suffering mamma and marry, it must be for just such a man as Frank Dormer.

Secure in her extreme youth and the young man’s speedy departure, no limits had been set upon their intercourse by either of her parents. They had rambled together, sung together, and read from the same books; the pretty Florence coming to Frank with all her difficulties, and making him the confidant of all her girlish secrets; while he—thrown for the first time into feminine society—petted and protected her with a growing tenderness which no one saw or suspected except Florence’s mother.

“I wouldn’t add story-telling to all my other evil propensities if I were you,” said the girl demurely, as she came a little nearer, yet stood ready to spring away if Frank attempted to approach her. “It was not I who threw those leaves on the lawn, Mr. Dormer. I wouldn’t vex poor old Johnson for the world, especially just now that I want some of his best verbenas for my garden. It was you who made the litter by shaking them off in all directions. I should advise you to pick them up directly, sir.”

“Come and help me then, mademoiselle.”

“No, indeed, monsieur! That would be to confess myself guilty. I am going for a walk. Oh, Mr. Dormer, I saw such a lovely fern on one of the heights that overhang the river! It’s about a mile higher up, and I mean to fetch it. You’ll come, won’t you?”

Frank picked up his straw hat and followed, as with her basket in hand she danced across the lawn, singing to herself, and stopping occasionally to pick the fairest buds she passed, until she had gathered a tiny bouquet for her companion’s buttonhole.

“Miss Dodson says every flower has a meaning attached to it,” Florence remarked, as she fastened them in his summer coat. “Do you know what these signify?”

“To me their meaning is second to the fact that they are among the last blossoms I shall have from an English garden,” Frank answered. “I think I shall take them with me to India if I can dry them nicely.”

“Were you thinking of your voyage when I disturbed you?” asked Florence, coming closer to him and speaking gravely. “Why do you go? Why not stay in England?”

“Simply, my dear, because my only chance of rising in the world lies in accepting this appointment. I have no friends, no interest——” He stopped himself and smiled. “But there—why trouble that little head of yours about matters you don’t understand?”

“I can understand that you are going away for years, and that mamma is very sorry, and so am I, really! Papa must have friends and interest,” she added suddenly. “He could help you, I am sure. I’ll go and speak to him at once.”

Dropping her basket, she was speeding away, but Frank caught and detained her.

“Dear Florence—dear little girl—you must not do this. You must promise me never to ask any favors from your father for me.”

“But you don’t doubt his willingness to assist you?” asked Florence, a little warmly.

“Certainly I do not. Mr. Heriton has been most kind, most hospitable to me.”

“Then why——” she began.

He checked her with an imperious:

“Hush—say no more! My pride has been galled enough of late years. Don’t let me have to take any but pleasant memories from here.”

Florence glanced at his darkening face. She had never before heard him allude to the clouds that had shadowed his early life, and she wisely diverted his thoughts into pleasanter channels. But whether she dived into the wood they were passing through, to peep into a bird’s nest, or challenged him to races, or hid from him in some bosky dingle, she always came back to his side with a softer, sweeter smile on her lip, a more caressing gentleness in her manner, as if she sought to make him amends for having evoked such unpleasant recollections.

Her wanderings made their ramble a long one, but at last they reached the spot where the rare fern was growing which she was desirous of possessing. While Frank Dormer dug carefully around the roots she ran to the edge of the bank, or cliff, which rose here almost perpendicularly from the river to so great a height that he grew uneasy, and shouted a caution to the adventurous girl.

“Take care, Florence; you are too rash. A fall from that cliff would be almost certain death!”

The warning had scarcely passed his lips when she turned round to answer him, and disappeared. A large stone had given way, carrying her light form with it. White with horror, he rushed madly to the place, expecting to see her mangled form lying on the sharp rocks which lined the bed of the river, or whirled away by the resistless current.

But the face of Florence, ghastly as his own, looked up at him from a tuft of heather, about halfway down the cliff, to which she was clinging with the tenacity of despair. He clenched his hands; his heart almost ceased to beat. He could not reach her, and to attempt to descend would be to hurl her from her frail support. Only by making his way to the foot of the bank, which involved a detour of a quarter of a mile, could he climb to where she clung and assist her descent. But the heather was already yielding to her weight, and—frightened child that she was—would she have the courage to retain her hold until he could come to her aid?

He spoke to her sharply and firmly.

“Florence, do you hear me? Can you listen, and do precisely as I tell you?”

The dilated eyes lit up hopefully, then closed, and a sick shudder passed over her.

“I don’t know,” she answered faintly, “but I’ll try. Oh, save me, Mr. Dormer—save me!”

“I will—I can, if you obey me. But you must be brave. Do you hear, Florence?” And he spoke with greater impressiveness than before. “For your mother’s sake! Remember, any great shock would kill her! For her sake you must be brave!”

“Oh, mamma—mamma!” moaned Florence. “Yes, I hear you; I will do all you bid me,” she added, directly afterward, with an effort to assume composure.

“Look up, then; don’t look down. Keep your eyes fixed on me.” For he dreaded the dizziness which must inevitably ensue if a downward glance showed her the extent of her danger. “Lower your right hand cautiously; now your foot; there are some projecting roots just below you, which will support your weight until I come.”

For a while she feared to stir. She felt that to loosen her hold in the slightest degree would be more than she dare venture; but when, in the same sharp, imperative tones, he commanded her to make the attempt, she obeyed, and effected the change of position safely.

“Now you will stay there without moving, without looking down, until I come, which will be as quickly as I can. Give me your word for this.”

“Yes,” said Florence, in clearer tones. “I am not so frightened now. I will think of my mother till you come back.”

Taking one last glance at the pale, patient face that gazed at him so trustfully, he hurried away. He scarcely dared think of what might happen ere he could gain the foot of the bank. With torn clothes, with bleeding hands, he flung himself down the rugged declivity, as soon as descent became anything like practicable. Although but a few minutes were consumed in this, the time seemed interminable until he drew near the spot where he had left Florence. And as he passed round a jutting crag that concealed her from his view, his foot faltered. He was positively afraid to proceed, lest the dire catastrophe should have occurred which he was striving to avert.

A moment’s struggle, and he sprang desperately forward. Better to know the worst than endure such horrible suspense.

Thank Heaven, she was still there—still clinging to the friendly roots. But her head had dropped on her shoulder, her fortitude was fast failing, and she was moaning piteously. She must have fallen ere long if Frank Dormer had not climbed quickly to her side and thrown his sustaining arm around her.

He was strong, agile, and a practiced climber, but he found it no easy task to descend the slippery cliff encumbered with Florence. But she was perfectly passive in his hands, and, encouraged by his hopeful words, moved when he told her, or stepped where he directed, and in the course of a little while was safely lowered to a mossy boulder large enough to form a seat for them both.

Here he laved her face and hands with the cool water that rippled around their feet, and supported her until the color came back to her cheek. Then she looked up at the spot from which she had slipped, at the small tufts of heather which had saved her from instant destruction; and imagining to herself the fate she had escaped, as well as the anguish and horror it would have inflicted on her parents, she leaned her face against his shoulder and began to cry softly. Florence Heriton was a child no longer. She realized in that moment—although, perhaps, she would have been unable to define her feelings—something of the value and solemnity attached to the Creator’s great gifts, life and health, and of the necessity of so using them that when they are withdrawn from us we may feel that they have not been wasted.

“Mr. Dormer, I want to thank you,” she said at last; “but when I try, the words choke me, and yet I know that you saved me, and——”

“My dear little Florence,” he said hastily, “I have as much to be thankful for in your escape as you have. I should not have permitted you to go so near the edge of that precipice alone. How could I have returned to the priory if—if anything had happened to you?”

He drew her almost convulsively to his bosom. He had never guessed till now how dear this little creature was becoming to him. But, ashamed of his emotion, he quickly released her, and assisted her to rise.

“We must hasten home, or there will be some wondering at our long absence.”

“And mamma will be uneasy, Mr. Dormer. How shall I tell her what has happened?”

“Do not tell her at all until I have gone away, and you can speak of it calmly. And promise me, Florence, that you will never expose yourself to such peril again.”

The promise was given, and then both were silent until they had nearly reached the house. But the sob that broke at intervals from the young girl’s lips, and the drops that glittered on her long eyelashes, told how busily her thoughts were at work.

Clinging to Frank’s hand as he bade her adieu at a side door, she exclaimed ingenuously:

“I wish I had something to give you, Mr. Dormer—something to make you think always of this day, and what you have done for me!”

“I need no souvenir to keep you in my thoughts, Florence,” he answered, smiling down at her animated face.

“But I should like you to have a ring or something to look at when you are in India, just to remind you how mamma and I regretted your leaving us.”

“Wait till I come back,” he said hurriedly. “If you are the same Florence I leave, I will ask you for what I would sooner have than all the diamonds of Golconda.”

The ringing of the second dinner bell made Florence start away to change her dress, and try and still the trembling in her limbs, before she made her appearance in the drawing room for the evening.

CHAPTER II.

SHADOWS.

Mr. Heriton, a portly, handsome man, scarcely past the middle age, was walking about the drawing room, addressing an occasional observation to his lady, who was sitting near a window which commanded the route Frank and Florence had taken an hour previously.

She had the hectic color and fragile form of continual suffering, and every time Mr. Heriton raised his voice or pushed a chair out of his way she put her hand to her side as if to stay the quickened beating of her heart. But she answered him cheerfully, with a smile on her lip, though a close observer might have detected in her eyes an anxious scrutiny of her restless husband, who was both moody and irritable.

“Is it not time we dined?” he asked. “It seems to me that our servants do as they please with us.”

“It is my fault,” Mrs. Heriton replied. “I bade them put the dinner back for a quarter of an hour. Mr. Dormer is out; Florence has carried him off on one of her wild excursions.”

Mr. Heriton knitted his brow.

“She has too much liberty. Her manners are terribly unformed, and she is quite childish for her age.”

“She is so young!” replied the mother deprecatingly. “I thought, dear Richard, we had agreed not to bring her forward too early?”

He ahemmed, and looked slightly embarrassed.

“Yes, yes—of course! But, as Morrison of Carnbraes was remarking this morning, the heiress of the Heritons is—is, in fact—is not an ordinary person.”

Mrs. Heriton looked at him inquiringly as he walked to and fro, but was silent. She knew that he would be more likely to explain himself if she did not attempt to question him.

“A year or two will transform Florence into a lovely woman, and, with her advantages and wealth, she ought to marry well—very well. By the bye, Mrs. Morrison made a remark about your protégé—this Mr. Dormer—a remark that I thought very impertinent.”

Mrs. Heriton forbore to remind him that she had nothing to do with Mr. Dormer’s introduction to the priory, but gently observed:

“An impertinence of any description is not worthy your notice, Richard.”

“True—true. But it was annoying, very annoying, to be asked if it was not dangerous to domesticate a young adventurer with my heiress.”

Mrs. Heriton reddened slightly.

“Surely Mr. Dormer does not merit such a name as that?”

“Well, no—not in the common acceptation of the term. He is an agreeable, intelligent young fellow. But you must acknowledge, my dear, that you are permitting too close an intimacy between him and our daughter. He might be tempted to try and entangle her into an engagement or elopement. Really,” and Mr. Heriton began to look quite excited at the idea, “really, it looks very serious.”

His lady smiled.

“I have too much faith in his honor and my little Florence’s simplicity to fear such a dénouement. Yet I know and feel that you are right; and if it were not that he will soon leave us, I should, for his sake, keep Florence more closely to her studies.”

Mr. Heriton stared.

“For his sake! Well, yes, I suppose you are right. Florence will have too much good sense to throw herself away. She must not marry until she has been properly presented. She must have a season in London, and——”

“Dear Richard, is it worth while to form plans that cannot be carried out for two or three years to come?” the lady asked, wearily leaning back with closed eyes, as if the mere prospect of her merry, artless daughter being converted into a fashionable belle alarmed her.

Mr. Heriton came to her side directly with affectionate solicitude.

“Dear Emma, I have worried you, haven’t I? You’re not feeling so well. Did you have a drive to-day?”

“No, I scarcely felt equal to it.”

“Ha! That carriage is not easy enough. I saw a new patent advertised in the Times expressly adapted for invalids. I’ll have one down for you.”

“Pray don’t!” said Mrs. Heriton earnestly. “I am very well satisfied with the one I have; and, indeed, Richard, it troubles me when you go to such needless expense.”

He patted her shoulder.

“Pooh—pooh! Do I ever begrudge anything that will add to your comfort?”

“No, never. But, Richard, dear, when I think of the enormous outlay of the last few years, I will confess that it frightens me. No, don’t go away. I have wanted to say this to you for some time. Do tell me frankly—are we not exceeding our income? Is not that the cause of the secret anxiety that I am sure is preying upon you?”

She had got both his hands in hers, and was looking so eagerly in his face that he was obliged to reply:

“Nonsense, love! You are too fearful. There is nothing amiss. The improvements will pay for themselves in a little while. I am somewhat pressed for ready money—yes, I don’t mind confessing that to you. But it’s nothing—absolutely nothing. Every gentleman of enterprise has to contend with such inconveniences occasionally. And I have been embarking rather largely in a capital speculation.”

“Speculation!” Mrs. Heriton repeated, looking really alarmed.

He laughed.

“I shouldn’t have used that expression. I know what a terrible sound it has in your ears. But there is not the slightest cause for uneasiness. It is a flourishing company I have joined, and I shall more than double what I have risked. For Florence’s sake, love, you ought to be pleased. It is for our child’s interests I try to increase our fortune.”

Mrs. Heriton tried to appear satisfied, but failed so signally that her husband’s irritability returned.

“Are we not to dine at all to-day? Really, Emma, there is strange mismanagement somewhere!”

Before she could reply the signal was given, and he led her to the dining room, where they were speedily joined by Frank. His apologies for the delay somewhat appeased his host’s ill humor, and he chatted cheerfully till the removal of the cloth.

But Mrs. Heriton’s keener eye detected that the young man was not in his usual spirits, and when she returned to the drawing room her questions quickly drew from the ingenuous Florence a recital of what had occurred.

She was lying back on her couch, still quivering with grateful emotion, and caressing the beloved one who had been in such peril, when the gentlemen joined them. A servant had been sent to the nearest town for letters, and Mr. Heriton was unusually eager to examine the bag. But there was nothing in it for him except a few notes and circulars of no importance, and he sat drumming on the table, and sipping his coffee, while Frank Dormer opened the two addressed to himself.

From one of his correspondents—a college acquaintance, who was enjoying a few months of London life—he was in the habit of receiving many little bits of town gossip, which he was so accustomed to read aloud, that when he closed his letter Florence exclaimed:

“What! No news to-night, Mr. Dormer?”

“None worth repeating. In fact, Willis’ letter is filled with lamentations at his own ill fortune. He has suffered himself to be persuaded to take some shares in a new company which has suddenly collapsed. I fear from what he tells me that hundreds will be sufferers by the rascality of the few who had constituted themselves directors.”

Mr. Heriton took the cup Florence had just replenished, and carelessly observed:

“Ah, there are so many of these mushroom affairs always springing up that it behooves a man to be cautious. Your friend should not have been so easily duped. What was the company called?”

Frank referred to his letter, and read aloud the high-sounding appellation. Mr. Heriton’s cup fell from his nerveless hand, he gasped for breath, and then, dashing his hand on the table, cried fiercely:

“It is a lie, sir—a lie!”

His wife and daughter started up in such terrified surprise that it recalled him to himself. But he was fearfully pale.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Dormer—I really beg your pardon! I don’t know what possessed me. How ridiculous I am! Sit down, Emma. Why do you persist in agitating yourself about nothing? Florence, child, go to your mother. Do you hear?” And he stamped his foot at her so passionately that she shrank from him in tearful affright.

With unsteady hand he lit a candle.

“I must go to my study. I have letters here that must be answered. Will you excuse me, Mr. Dormer?”

When he had quitted the room, Mrs. Heriton, stifling her own dread, quietly said that she believed he had taken a few shares in the defunct company, and felt mortified that his name should be mixed up in a fraudulent concern.

The composure of her manner reassured her daughter and deceived Frank, who knew nothing of his host’s affairs, and was thoughtfully musing over the contents of his other missive. He was so absorbed in his musings that he did not hear Florence when she came to bid him good night.

Then he started up.

“Good night and good-by, dear little friend! I have received my summons, and shall be far away from here when you open your eyes in the morning.”

Florence looked aghast.

“So soon—so soon? Oh, mamma! Why must he go?”

“It is his duty, child,” her mother replied gravely. “Don’t distress him with vain regrets. Bid him adieu, and we will both pray for his successful career and safe return.”

Florence put out both her hands.

“Dear Mr. Dormer, good-by! And Heaven bless you! I shall greatly miss you. I shall never, never forget you!”

“You promise too much,” he answered, trying to laugh. “You will be a happy wife long before I return to England—if I ever do.”

Florence raised her eyes to his with dismay.

“If ever you come back! Do you mean that we shall not see you again? What—never? Mamma, does he mean it?”

She burst into tears, and Frank, more troubled at her distress than he dared express, led her to her mother, who was anxiously looking on.

For some few minutes the young girl could not still her passionate weeping. She had never contemplated an utter separation, and it terrified her.

“It is like death,” she murmured, “to see any one you love go away with no hope of their returning.”

“Mr. Dormer spoke too hastily, Florence,” said her mother. “If he leaves friends here whom he values, he will come back some day to them. Now say good-by once more, and run away, unless you wish to spoil my night’s rest.”

Florence instantly obeyed, but her faltering farewell and the wistful glance of her soft eyes made Frank forget himself. He put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead; then turned to the fireplace and shaded his face with his hand till the closing of the door told him she had gone.

Then he went to Mrs. Heriton.

“Forgive me! If you knew all I feel and suffer at this moment—how dear Florence has become to me—to me, who may never——”

He could say no more, but she kindly answered:

“Be more hopeful. Look forward to the future with a firm trust in Providence, and remember that Florence is very young, and may still be free when you have achieved a position that warrants your asking her father for her, if you still wish it.”

His face glowed with joy.

“And would you—would Mr. Heriton ever consent? Ah, madam, you say this to encourage me; but years of patient toil would scarcely place me on a footing with your heiress!”

The lady sighed heavily, and pressed her hands to her throbbing heart.

“There are many changes in life, and Florence may not be exempt from misfortunes. I have terrible misgivings. A few years, and Heaven only knows where my child may be!”

She spoke so low that Frank bent forward to hear her; and, raising herself, she laid her clasped hands in his.

“Frank Dormer,” she said, with solemn impressiveness, “I shall have gone to my grave long ere you turn your face homeward! I have faith in you—great faith. So much, that, were Florence older, I would thankfully see her yours. But I can do nothing. I have been weak and helpless all my life. I can only strive for strength to leave my dear ones to wiser guardianship than mine. But it will comfort me to hear you promise that, under any circumstances, you will protect and befriend my child if she needs it.”

“I promise it, on my soul, Mrs. Heriton,” the young man answered, reverently bending his head.

She murmured a blessing, and, seeing that the excitement was too much for her, he rang for her maid. It was their last earthly meeting, as she had predicted; but ere Frank quitted the priory at daybreak, a sealed packet was given to him. It contained a tiny miniature of Florence and her mother, and on the paper that enveloped it was faintly traced the word “Remember!”

Mr. Heriton also left the priory that day, on pretext of a little business to attend to at Morpeth; but his lady was not surprised to hear that he had been seen at the coach office when the coach was starting for London.

The railways had not then reached Northumberland, and Mrs. Heriton prepared herself for days of suspense, to be endured with what patience she could muster, before she could expect his return, or even a letter to explain the cause of his departure.

On the evening of the second day she was reclining in her easy-chair, with Florence sitting at her feet, talking sorrowfully of the absent Frank, when a servant announced the arrival of two strangers.

“They want master, please, ma’am; and they wouldn’t be said nay when I told ’em he was out. They’re Lunnoners by the look of ’em.”

“Are they gentlemen, Mark—friends of papa’s?” asked Florence, her curiosity aroused by the man’s evident perturbation.

Before he could answer, Mrs. Heriton touched her daughter.

“Go away, my dear. And, Mark, show these persons in here.”

Florence looked dubious.

“Let me stay, mamma. You’re not fit to talk to these people, whoever they are; and I will be very reserved and dignified, as Miss Heriton ought to be.”

“No, no!” was the hurried reply. “They come on business. Pray go away!” And she reluctantly withdrew.

Mrs. Heriton knew that her worst forebodings were realized as soon as her unwelcome visitors entered. But she struggled with the sharp pain that shook her feeble frame, and calmly inquired their errand. It was soon told, though with tolerable gentleness, for the men had a little compassion for the delicate woman who questioned them.

Mr. Heriton had rendered himself responsible for the liabilities of the company he had joined, to such an extent that ruin—absolute ruin—must be the consequence. These men had been empowered to take possession of the priory, and would remain until some arrangements could be made.

She offered no useless objections, uttered no complaints, but heard them with patience, and gave the necessary orders to her servants. But when they had quitted the room, and the miserable wife and mother began to comprehend the extent of the trouble that menaced her, a bitter cry burst from her laboring heart.

“Florence, my child—my poor child!”

Her daughter, who was lingering in the next room until recalled, heard the shriek, and flew to her mother. She found her lying back in her chair, looking so strangely white that she hastily summoned assistance.

The female servants gathered around their lady, and tried every known remedy to revive her, but without success.

“A doctor!” cried the half-frantic Florence. “She has fainted. Oh, if papa were but here!”

One of the strangers, who had stolen in unchecked in the confusion, put his fingers to Mrs. Heriton’s pulse, then crept softly away.

“Heaven help that poor young creature!” he whispered to his companion. “I don’t like to be the first to tell her, but a doctor’s no use. The lady’s dead.”

CHAPTER III.

THE LEGACY.

Eight years had passed over the head of Florence Heriton since the sudden death of her beloved mother, and the gay, happy child of fifteen was transformed into the thoughtful, beautiful woman.

Florence had more than fulfilled the promise of her early girlhood. The slim figure had expanded into well-rounded proportions, and if the rosy color and arch expression of her features had departed, they were replaced by a softened sweetness and delicacy even more charming.

Mrs. Heriton’s worst misgivings had been realized. The priory had passed into other hands. By slow degrees the rest of her husband’s property had been dissipated in vain attempts to rebuild his fortunes by wild speculations. Friends had grown weary of dissuading and advising, and had given up a connection which only exposed them to urgent entreaties for loans to be repaid on the success of such and such an enterprise.

Only Florence clung more closely than ever to the father whom she loved and pitied; and, fancying that her mother’s death had been in some measure the cause of his insatiable restlessness, she tried in every conceivable way to minister to his comfort, and to wile him from those thoughts of achieving riches which tormented him.

As they grew poorer they had been compelled to economize more and more, and they were now occupying lodgings in a very quiet part of Brompton.

There was no thoroughfare through this street, which ended in a mews, so it was indeed very quiet and very dull. From her sitting-room window Florence had listlessly watched the opposite neighbors till she knew them all and was familiar with their habits—the half-pay major and his shrewish wife; the invalid lady with her large family of boisterous children, and the three old maids who were patterns of propriety and stiffness to every one in the street. But her eye always rested longest on two young females, daily governesses, who with commendable punctuality went to and fro every day. How she envied them—how she longed to take up her books, too, and toil with the proud satisfaction of knowing that her meed would be the glittering coins of which she so often felt an absolute need.

But Mr. Heriton was prouder than in the days of his prosperity. He was always dreaming of retrieving the past by some stroke of good luck, and he insisted that his heiress should do nothing that would degrade him. A hint that she was anxious to make some use of her accomplishments threw him into such a fit of passion that his frightened daughter never dared repeat it. But it was a weary life for one so young. Without a piano—a luxury she had long ago been forced to deny herself—without books, save those she had read till she wearied of them—forbidden to walk out because it was indecorous for Miss Heriton to be seen without an attendant—the days went by as slowly and sadly as Mariana’s in the moated grange.

Mr. Heriton—dressed with punctilious care—always sallied forth after he had breakfasted, and did not return until evening, when Florence was expected to be ready to receive him with smiles. He never asked how she had spent the long interval; nor did he seem to guess how often it was passed in weeping over the pages of her one great treasure—a little journal her mother had kept, and which she jealously guarded from every eye, for was not the last entry about Frank Dormer?—that dear, kind, gentle Frank, more thought of, more loved and regretted now than even in the first days of his absence. Mrs. Heriton’s feeble hand had traced these words only a few hours before she died:

“Thursday, May, 18—.—Mr. Dormer left us yesterday for India. Even as I imagined, he loves my darling, and hopes to return some day rich enough to wed her. Heaven bless and prosper him! For he is a good young man, and it comforts and strengthens me to think that there is some one in this wide world who will protect her when I am gone. Perhaps I am too romantic in hoping this, but so pure a love will surely outlast the sad changes which I am compelled to dread. My poor Richard—my poor little Florence!”

And here the writer had suddenly ceased, as if her fears overcame her. But when Florence grew very sad she would take out her mother’s journal, ponder over this last page, and, with hope lighting up her eye and a soft blush o’erspreading her delicate cheek, whisper to herself: “It will be all right when Frank comes back to me; I shall never know sorrow more when he is here!”

Still, as the years sped on and he returned not, the deferred hope became an additional sorrow. He had written to Mr. Heriton twice after the tidings of Mrs. Heriton’s death had reached him, and each time the packet had contained a voluminous inclosure for Florence. But these letters were tossed into the fire half read, with such fierce execrations at the writer’s insolence that she dared not ask the nature of their contents.

At the close of a day in November, when the evening was setting in with a misting rain, the dinner hour had almost passed without Mr. Heriton making his appearance. Florence had shaken up the pillows of his easy-chair, coaxed the fire into a bright blaze, and rectified all the omissions of the slatternly servant—who complained bitterly of the airs miss’ pa gave himself if the tablecloth wasn’t quite straight, or the knives dull—and had then gone backward and forward to the window many times to watch for his coming.

The governesses, shielded with umbrellas and waterproofs, had returned home half an hour previously, and as they stood at the door waiting to be admitted, had caught a glimpse of the pretty, anxious face peering through the opposite window. They must have surmised her fears, for their own blind was raised once or twice, and by and by one of them, with a shawl thrown over her head, tripped out of the house, picked her way across the muddy road, and, standing under the lamp-post, looked up and waved her hand to attract Florence’s attention.

She threw up the sash immediately, and a cheerful voice exclaimed:

“Pardonnez, mademoiselle, but you are uneasy—is it not so? Monsieur your papa has not returned?”

“No, he has not,” was the hurried reply. “Tell me—do you know if anything has happened to him?”

“No, he was well and safe when I passed through Pall Mall on my way home. He had just encountered an old friend, whom he was warmly greeting.”

Florence’s heart bounded. Could it be Frank Dormer? Unlikely as it was, her spirits rose, and she gratefully thanked the young lady for the information.

“Do not speak of it,” she answered. “The suggestion was Susan’s, my cousin’s. Good night—good night!” And she sped back to her own cozy fireside.

“How kind to interest themselves about me—a stranger!” murmured Florence. “How I wish papa would let me make their acquaintance! Who can he be staying with? An old friend whom he greeted warmly! Ah, we have so few friends left, it is difficult to guess who this one can be.”

Another hour had almost elapsed ere her suspense was ended. Mr. Heriton came in, rubbing his hands and complaining of the cold, but evidently in the highest possible spirits.

“What a wretched fire you keep, my love! Ring for more coals! Is dinner ready? Have I kept you waiting?”

“A little, sir. I should have been very uneasy about you if one of our neighbors had not kindly assured me of your safety.”

Mr. Heriton lifted his eyebrows.

“Rather impertinent, I think, of such people to trouble themselves about our affairs! We must get out of this miserable hole, my love, as soon as we can. It is scarcely respectable.”

He took his seat at the table without waiting for a reply, and began uncovering the dishes.

“Nothing but a sole and hashed mutton! Do you call this a dinner?”

Florence colored painfully.

“Dear papa, I reminded you a week ago that my housekeeping purse was empty, and Mrs. Jones is—is dissatisfied at the length of our bill.”

She did not add that she had sold a pair of pearl bracelets to quiet the woman with a partial payment.

Mr. Heriton frowned angrily.

“You must be a very bad manager. However, I shall engage a thorough housekeeper as soon as we leave here, and then there will be a prospect of having a meal fit to sit down to. Why are there no wineglasses here?” he asked of the girl who waited.

She answered rather saucily that it worn’t no use to put them if there worn’t no wine to drink out of them; and missus said she shouldn’t order no more till the last dozen was paid for.

“Quit the room!” Mr. Heriton exclaimed, with dignity. “And tell your mistress to send me her account in the morning. I shall seek other apartments!”

The girl, who had gone through many such scenes, and only refrained from a pert answer for Florence’s sake, flounced away, and the father and daughter finished their meal in silence.

Florence longed to know what had happened to detain him, but feared to ask, till, as he drew his chair to the fire, he put his arm lovingly across her shoulder.

“My darling, you look pale and thin, and your dresses are shabby; but I shall alter all this soon, and my pretty heiress shall take her proper place in society again. Who do you think I have seen to-day?”

“I am a miserable guesser. Pray tell me, papa.”

“Have you forgotten Lady Mason, an acquaintance of your poor mother?”

“Forgotten her! Oh, no, sir! A tall, thin, serious lady, whose grave looks used to make me dislike her, until mamma explained that they were occasioned by the bad conduct of her only son, who was a very profligate man.”

Mr. Heriton stirred the fire vigorously.

“Pooh! Nonsense! Robert Mason is no Puritan, but he’s a remarkably clever fellow; a citizen of the world, child, with a marvelous faculty for business. He is the secretary of a company that is the most prosperous and best-managed one in London.”

“Indeed, sir?” said Florence doubtfully.

“Yes,” he sharply retorted. “Why do you speak in that sneering, unladylike tone? Do you think I am an idiot to be duped by any tale I hear? Am I not old enough and experienced enough to judge for myself whether it is so? I tell you Lieutenant Mason is a clever man, and my very good friend. How dare you doubt my word!”

“Forgive me, papa; I did not mean to vex you,” pleaded Florence tearfully.

He softened as he saw her regret.

“You are a silly child. My sister Margaret has infected you with her own suspicious disposition. My pretty Floy,” he added fondly, “my only blessing—is it not for you that I strive to regain our lost wealth? Shall I ever be happy until I have restored to you your inheritance?”

Florence slid down on her knees beside him.

“Papa, don’t think of it—don’t strive for what I have freely yielded. Only love me, and let me work for you, and I ask nothing else.”

He kissed her forehead.

“Pooh, you foolish little thing! You don’t know what you are talking about. Our prospects are brightening, and ere long we shall buy back the priory, and my daughter shall keep open house there to all comers to celebrate our return.”

Florence sighed drearily. She had heard this predicted so often! But Mr. Heriton did not notice it, and went on talking in the same animated manner.

“Mason was delighted to see me. He entered warmly into my affairs, and has put me in the way of a good thing or two already. You see, my dear, I have been unfortunate hitherto in having to deal with artful persons who took no real interest in me. Now, Mason is quite a different man, and will not let me run any risks. Do you comprehend my meaning?”

“Not quite, papa; but I hope he is all you think him. Does he thoroughly understand”—and now Florence spoke hesitatingly—“that—that we have no ready money left to—to speculate with?”

Mr. Heriton frowned.

“How oddly you express yourself! Of course, I frankly told him that all my available capital is locked up in various investments. It is very unfortunate that it should be so, for I cannot buy some shares he has recommended me until I can put my hand on a few hundreds.”

Florence thought in her heart that it was quite as well as it was; but she did not venture to say so, and her father rose and paced the room for some few minutes. When he came back to his seat he said irritably:

“How it wounds me to see you so careless of our interests! Really, Florence, it is cruelly disheartening to find you so utterly indifferent.”

“But indeed, papa,” she said affectionately, “I have been listening to all you have said, and wishing it were in my power to give you back the priory.”

He drew his chair closer to hers.

“And it is in your power to assist me greatly, Florence. You can let me have the money I require. That legacy my sister Margaret’s husband left you will be ample, and I will return it ere long.”

Florence grew very pale. Mrs. Margaret Blunden—who knew and condemned her brother’s follies—had exacted from her a promise never to be tempted to touch this bequest; and her niece had freely given it, for it was their little all. She knew but too well that there was nothing else left to them, and she held it sacred, for it was her steadfast purpose when Mr. Heriton saw the hopelessness of his speculations to devote it to the purchase of an annuity for him. The more madly he launched into fresh schemes the more firmly Florence clung to this sum of money for his sake. With this, and what she could earn, her father’s old age could at least be secured from want.

She had long dreaded such a request, and now summoned up all her fortitude to refuse it.

“Dearest papa, if I had reserved Uncle Blunden’s legacy for my own uses I would willingly give it to you, but I have a special purpose for it. Don’t ask me to part with it, please, for I dare not.”

“Pooh! Florence—this is so childish! I do but ask it as a loan; a few weeks or months at the farthest, and you shall have it again, doubled.”

Florence was very pale, but her resolution was not to be shaken.

“I cannot give it you, papa—I cannot, indeed! We have nothing else left, and if this were lost, too, what would become of us?”

Mr. Heriton began to grow angry at her firmness.

“Child, it will not be lost, I tell you. Think what you are doing by your obstinacy; you are depriving me of what may be my last chance of recovering myself. With those few hundreds in my possession, I see my way to fortune.”

“But, alas, dear papa, you have thought the same thing so often.”

Mr. Heriton started up and pushed her violently from him.

“Unfeeling girl! After all I have risked on your account—the days and nights of mental anxiety I have endured—the insults I have submitted to from men who formerly were ready to humble themselves before me—after all that I have encountered and borne with for your sake—yes—all—all for you—you are the first to reproach me with my unfortunate failures.”

“Don’t mistake me so, papa; indeed, I did not mean to reproach you!” said Florence, now in tears at his harshness.

“Prove it—prove it!” he answered vehemently. “If you really repent your injustice, sign me a check on the banker with whom the money is deposited.”

She had never actually disobeyed any wish of her father until now, and it was not without a terrible pang that she repeated her refusal.

“I cannot, sir! Forgive me, but I cannot!”

Mr. Heriton struck his forehead with his hand.

“Am I a villain, that my only child refuses to trust me? Go, Florence—leave me; I can bear no more.”

But instead of quitting the room, she threw her arms around his neck, beseeching him to pardon her if she seemed unkind.

“I do not doubt you, my own dear papa. How could I? Are we not all in all to each other? Let me work for you—let me earn money for you! I should be the happiest of the happy if your little comforts were purchased by my exertions. But don’t ask me again for Uncle Blunden’s bequest; I have promised Aunt Margaret that I will not touch it, and you would despise your daughter if she broke her word.”

Mr. Heriton, quivering with passion, put her forcibly from him.

“I believe, Miss Heriton, that Mrs. Blunden has on more than one occasion expressed a wish that you should take up your residence with her. I withdraw my opposition to her request; you are perfectly at liberty to go whenever you please. You have forfeited my affection by your selfish and deceitful conduct; you have chosen to be guided by an illiberal woman, who has no sisterly affection for me. Go to her, and forget that you have a father, as I shall try to forget that I have ever had a child!”

“Papa, you cannot mean this!” she faltered. “You know that I would not leave you for Aunt Margaret or any one else.”

With freezing politeness he walked to the door and opened it for her.

“This discussion is very painful to me, Miss Heriton; I must beg that you will not prolong it. As you may depart before I rise in the morning, I will say my adieus now.”

Florence tried to answer him, but she had been feeling poorly all day with a feverish cold; and, thoroughly upset by the scene she had gone through, she dropped into a chair, half fainting.

Greatly alarmed by her pale face and closed eyes, her father rang the bell and hurried to support her.

“Look up, my darling—speak to me! Great heavens! Have I killed her—have I killed her?”

Florence made an effort to answer him, but was too ill to do more than murmur an affectionate “Dear—dear papa!” And his alarm increasing, he called loudly for assistance. The mistress of the house, who cherished a great liking for “poor, pretty Miss Heriton,” and disliked her consequential father, came bustling in and carried her off to bed, assiduously nursing her during the days that she lay in the alternate chills and delirium of a low fever.

Mr. Heriton was extremely attentive during this time, and seemed anxious to atone for the past, fussily hovering about his daughter’s bed, and entreating her to tell him if there was any delicacy she could fancy—a pineapple, for instance, or peaches, or guava jelly—till poor Florence, who knew that all these things were beyond his reach, grew worried and unhappy at his thoughtless way of talking.

Partly to put an end to it she left the room as soon as her weakened limbs would support her, and her longing for fresh air led her to wrap herself up on the first sunny day, and stroll languidly up and down the street. The bright, frosty atmosphere braced and revived her. There was even a pale tint of the rose on her cheek as she turned her steps homeward, but she was so fragile-looking that one of the governesses, coming briskly from her daily avocation, stopped, and, after a moment’s hesitation, came and spoke to her with sympathizing kindness.

“I am afraid you have been ill, Miss Heriton? We had missed you from the window. Will you accept my arm down the street?”

Florence took it as frankly as it was offered. The pale, oval face, the smoothly braided brown hair, and neat gray dress of this gentlewoman irresistibly attracted her.

“I have been ill, but I am better, thank you; and it is such a treat to breathe the air once more!”

“Cannot you prolong your stroll as far as the park? The walks are dry, and there are seats where you could rest for a few minutes if warmly clothed.”

“I should like it much; but papa does not approve of my going there alone,” Florence replied, and her new friend was too delicate to say more.

They sauntered together to the door of Mr. Heriton’s lodgings, and then the governess, moved by an impulse of pity for the young creature who seemed so lonely, said:

“My name is Denham—Susan Denham. My cousin and I rarely receive any visitors, but we are generally at home on Thursday afternoon, and if you will come and read or work with us we shall be pleased to see you.”

Florence pressed her hand warmly.

“I shall like it so much. I will be sure to come.”

It was not until she was in her own room, taking off her wraps, that she remembered Mr. Heriton’s exordiums against forming any low connections. She timidly mentioned the invitation as they sat together in the evening, adding:

“I should much like to go, papa, if you will let me.”

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“You don’t seem to see the drift of this attention, my dear. These governesses would like the name of having finished the education of Miss Heriton, of the priory. If they are really talented women you may engage their services. I have noticed that your Italian is imperfect. I will inquire the price of a piano for you.”

Florence wisely raised no objections, but resolved to evade compliance with injunctions that would only involve her in a fresh anxiety. How could she repay the kindness of Miss Denham by asking for lessons for which she knew her father had no means of paying? It was such things as these which made her miserable and wounded her best feelings.

At first she was half inclined to renounce the visit, but her longing for a change from the monotony of her life and thoughts overcame this resolution; and, dressing carefully on the appointed afternoon, she was just starting for Miss Denham’s lodging, when a carriage stopped at the door and Mrs. Margaret Blunden was announced.

Owing to the antagonistic temperaments of the brother and sister, they rarely met. Mrs. Blunden was as economical as Mr. Heriton was extravagant, and she had always so strenuously opposed and predicted the consequences of his speculations that her very name was unpleasant in his ears. But his daughter, who recognized her aunt’s warm, generous nature, really loved her, and was always pleased when they met.

Mrs. Blunden was a tall, stout, florid lady, so full of health and vigor that Florence looked thinner and paler than ever as she hurried to meet her. Her aunt, instead of bestowing upon her the customary embrace, put back the arms extended to her.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t play the hypocrite with me, Florence Heriton!”

Astonished at her manner, her niece drew back and surveyed her wonderingly. Mrs. Blunden threw back her shawl as if its soft folds choked her.

“What had I done that you should willfully deceive me, child? For your dead mother’s sake I have loved you dearly. Was it worth your while to lie to me?”

“Aunt Margaret, you must be laboring under some strange mistake,” Florence replied.

“A mistake!” was the vehement retort. “Is it a mistake that you wrote to me yesterday, assuring me that you had not and would not meddle with your legacy? Was it worth while, I ask, to send me this assurance, when you had withdrawn it some days ago? Attempt no further denials, for I have been to the banker, and seen your letter authorizing the withdrawal. Hush! I don’t want to hear any evasions. You have deceived me, and I have done with you forever!”

Before Florence could attempt a reply she had given her one more reproachful look and swept out of the room.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOVERNESSES.

For some time after Mrs. Blunden’s carriage rolled away from the door, Florence remained like one stupefied. As her aunt’s words resounded in her ears, a terrible suspicion grew upon her that there was truth in the tale, and that the money was actually withdrawn.

She had a hazy recollection of her father coming to her bedside one evening, when her head was wandering, and asking her to sign a paper he held in his hand. She remembered, too, how, when the circumstance recurred to her memory, she had asked him what he had wished her to write. Ah, and it was this that troubled her more, far more, than the loss she had sustained, for, without the slightest hesitation, he had carelessly answered:

“I told you—did I not—that your Aunt Margaret had sent a note of inquiry? If she had not seen your own signature to the reply I have written in your name, we should have had her fussing here to nurse you.”

Florence, weak and wanting quiet, had felt grateful to him at the time for his thoughtful consideration. Could it really be that he had been deceiving her at the moment she kissed and thanked him thus warmly? Had he taken advantage of her helplessness to rob her of the bequest she had guarded so jealously for his sake?

Starting up with an anguished cry, she told herself it could not be true. Her father, a gentleman by birth and of unimpeachable honor, could not be guilty of this paltry deed. No, no—it was impossible; she had been foolish to believe it so readily—she should have demanded further particulars from Mrs. Blunden, and not let her go until she had explained herself. Now nothing remained but to wait until Mr. Heriton came home, and then frankly tell him what she had heard.

But what a task for a loving daughter! If the accusation were false, with what just indignation he would meet it! If he had indeed possessed himself of this money—— At the mere thought Florence covered her face with her hands, and sank down in her former position.

All idea of visiting Miss Denham was abandoned. The afternoon glided away, and the servant came in to lay the cloth; but Florence did not seem conscious of her presence until, with a pitying touch on her arm, the girl said:

“You’re not so well, are you, miss? Let me ask missus for a glass of wine for you; she never begrudges nothing you has.”

Without waiting for a refusal, she went for the cordial, and stood over the pale, exhausted girl until she had swallowed it. Then Florence laid her head back on the pillows, and tried by perfect stillness to baffle the heavy aching in her head and heart.

Mr. Heriton came in with his usual air of self-importance, a roll of papers in his hand, at which he glanced occasionally as he muttered some calculations.

“Fifty-two and fifty—no, fifty and a half—is—— Ah, my dear, not so well to-day? You must have a few weeks by the sea to set you up. Fifty and a half—— Why, whose is this?”

As he spoke he picked up a silk scarf which his daughter had seen around Mrs. Blunden’s neck when she came into the room.

“It belongs to Aunt Margaret, sir.”

“What! Has she been here?” he asked, with knitted brows. “I wish you would not encourage her visits! I have repeatedly told you that I would rather not have any communication with such a coarse-minded, unfeeling woman as my sister has shown herself of late years.”

Florence raised herself, and plunged desperately into the subject that troubled her.

“My aunt will not come here again, sir; she is very angry with me.”

“Had she the impertinence to tell you so?”

“She is angry,” Florence went on, in tones that faltered despite her utmost efforts, “because she thinks I have deceived her. She has been—on business of her own, I suppose—to the banker of her late husband, and——”

“Well?” queried her father, finding that she paused; his own face flushing and eyes sinking as they met her wistful gaze.

“And she tells me that my legacy has been drawn out. Oh, papa!” Florence flung herself into his arms, sobbing. “It is not true, is it? Do tell me that it isn’t true!”

“And if it is, what then?” he retorted. “If it had not been for my meddling, mischief-making sister you would have known nothing of the circumstance until I was prepared to return the loan. You don’t suppose I mean to rob you, child, do you?”

Without replying, she turned from him and wept as if her heart would break. Nothing angered him more than the sight of her tears, and he soon worked himself into the belief that he was an ill-used man.

“Are you mad, Florence, that you go on in this ridiculous manner? Have done, I say! I’ll not put up with it! I consider that I have an undoubted right, as your father and guardian, to invest your money for your benefit. You must be of an avaricious disposition, or you would not act in this way.”

Still she made no reply, but her silent grief eventually softened him, and, sitting down beside her, he said, with more feeling:

“My dear, dear child, don’t weep like this! I cannot bear to see it; and, indeed, my love, you are wrong to entertain such fears—you are, really.”

“Papa, it was our little all. It was a provision for your old age,” she murmured. “While that was safe I could bear the anxiety of the present.”

“I know, dear—yes, I know. I did not mean what I said when I called you avaricious. You have been the tenderest, the most self-denying of daughters to me. Heaven bless you for it! And don’t—don’t mistrust me, Florry, my darling! I meant no wrong to you in taking that money. I saw such a splendid opportunity of doubling it—for you, love—for you. And it is as you say, our all—our last venture. Surely Heaven will not let this tiny bark be wrecked, like the rest!”

Startled by the passionate anguish in his broken accents, Florence looked in his face. For the first time it wore a frightened aspect: for the first time his own sanguine faith in his success was shaken.

“I should go mad,” he muttered, “if Mason failed me and I was obliged to know that I had ruined my child past redemption. Florence,” he added, almost wildly, “don’t torture me with doubts and reproaches. Mason has assured me that the money is safe, and he would not deceive me; he dare not, I tell you—he dare not!”

“Hush, papa!” said Florence gently. “We’ll never mention it again. I’m sure you meant well, so we’ll wait and hope.”

His looks cleared.

“Yes, yes, love, we’ll hope. Now you are my kind, sensible child once more. We’ll hope, Florry; and when the hope becomes a certainty, and we go back to Northumberland, my darling shall have a tiara of pearls for her pretty brown hair, from her fond father. How well such an ornament would become you! Which would you like best—pearls alone, or mixed with sapphires? Not talk about it now, do you say? Very well, love; but it shall not be forgotten.”

Florence waited on her father that night with a kind of protecting tenderness in her voice and manner. This last rash act of his had set the seal on their ruin, and she must nerve herself to that darksome future which was inevitably coming upon them. He had no one but her to care for him. Then she must be brave and energetic, and prepare herself for the worst. Taking up the occupation of her new acquaintances over the way seemed the most feasible method of helping herself when the crash came and Mr. Heriton was forced to acknowledge the necessity. And Florence waited impatiently till the week came round and she could call upon them.

Susan Denham was alone when she entered, but her cordial greeting had scarcely been spoken when her cousin joined them. She was a tall, handsome woman, two or three years Florence’s senior, with commanding deportment and an indescribable fascination about her, which she used to laughingly declare was inherited from her Parisian mother.

Susan was thrown in the shade beside her handsome, imperious cousin; yet there was something so sweet, or, rather, so good and true in her every look and gesture, that to know her was to love her. You felt instinctively that she was to be depended upon; and that, although no scriptural quotations ever passed her lips, her religion was the guiding principle of her blameless life.

After she had taken Florence’s hat and mantle, and given her the softest seat in the bright little room, she sat smilingly by, while Julia talked to their visitor. Florence was quietly amused at the candor with which, after their mutual reserve wore off, both the cousins confessed that they had long wished to make her acquaintance.

“Not from precisely similar motives,” Julia acknowledged. “I wanted to know you because you were evidently a lady, intelligent and accomplished; while Susan’s motives were——”

She stopped herself in a little confusion, but Florence finished the sentence for her.

“Benevolent ones, were they not? She saw me very lonely and friendless, and was eager to do me good. It is precisely because I think she will help me that I have come to you now.”

Susan Denham dropped her work in her lap, and listened with grave and encouraging attention.

The blood rushed to Florence’s cheeks and temples, but she would not play the coward, and, after a very short pause, she said:

“I must frankly tell you that I fear a change for the worse in our circumstances. I must work for papa and myself, and—I want to be a governess.”

Susan Denham sighed, and Julia impulsively exclaimed:

“Oh, choose any life but ours, Miss Heriton! You little know the slights you would have to contend with—all your best feelings trampled on—all your aspirations crushed beneath the contempt or indifference of your sordid employers. You must be a lady in appearance, in education, in tastes and sympathies, or you are not fit to be the instructress of their children. But you must not consider yourself their equal; you must neither associate with them, nor expect consideration from them; and, above all,” she added, with a bitter laugh, “you must not permit their sons to fall in love with you.”

“On the other hand,” said Susan gently, “you are fairly paid for your labor. By consistent conduct you cannot fail to win the respect and esteem of your employers; the children you teach often become very dear to you, and, on the whole, the hardships of a governess’ lot are not greater than those of any other profession.”

“Look on this picture, and on that,” laughed Julia, “and then say, Miss Heriton, which strikes you most forcibly. Both are colored with truth, but I think mine is according to the rule, and Susan’s forms the exception.”

“If I were embarking in this new undertaking solely on my own account,” Florence replied, after a few minutes’ consideration, “I think your sketch of its difficulties would frighten me. But it is for papa; and however toilsome or wearying the day might prove, I should be able to return to him at night, should I not?”

Susan Denham pressed the hand Florence had laid on hers, as she instinctively turned to read encouragement in those soft brown eyes.

“You will succeed, I think. A work begun in a right spirit rarely fails. Now tell us what we can do to help you.”

“Yes, speak openly,” added Julia. “If it is a decided thing, I withdraw my opposition, and will do my best to get you pupils. Shall you teach under your own name?”

Florence’s face flushed this time with a little pride.

“I had not thought of that. Perhaps papa would not approve of it, and yet I should not like to assume a false one.

“No slurs upon me, if you please,” cried Julia gayly. “But that surprised look proclaims your innocence. Know, then, that although at home I am simply Julia Denham, at the houses of my pupils I am La Demoiselle Julie, and my French is far more correct than my English. Susan shakes her head at me, but ladies will have foreign governesses if they can get them, and they pay them much more liberally than their own countrywomen. The substitution of Mademoiselle for plain Miss pays for my kid gloves and collars.”

“Miss Heriton, I fancy, will be content with her own English appellation,” said Susan, who never approved of anything that savored of trickery. And she began to question and counsel Florence with as much tact as kindness.

It was then arranged that she should study assiduously those subjects in which she knew herself deficient, and avail herself of the cousins’ piano to get up her long-neglected music. While Susan went in search of a manual which she thought would prove useful, Julia carelessly observed:

“You are intimate with Lieutenant Mason, are you not?”

Surprised at the question, Florence answered:

“Papa is; but I have only seen him once at his mother’s. What made you ask me?” she demanded, her fears aroused directly.

“I don’t know; mere curiosity, I believe. Lieutenant Mason is distantly related to a family in which I teach, and I have seen him occasionally—that is all, Miss Heriton.”

“I wish I did know more of him,” said Florence anxiously. “I wish I knew whether he is to be trusted.”

Julia looked at her with surprise, not unmingled with displeasure.

“Of course he is! Who doubts Lieutenant Mason’s honor?”

“I’m so glad to hear you say this!” Florence cried joyfully. “Papa has had some business transactions with him, and I could not help feeling uneasy as to the results.”

“The lieutenant would not be very much pleased if he knew the suspicions you entertain,” said Julia. “At least, I should think not.”

“If I have done him injustice, I am very sorry,” was the earnest reply.

She was heard with a laughing reminder that it is the fate of public men to hear themselves maligned; and with this retort Julia’s annoyance seemed to vanish, for as her cousin reëntered the room she began to talk gayly of something else.

CHAPTER V.

AN UNPLEASANT ERRAND.

Two or three weeks passed away, during which Florence studied assiduously. She had an incentive to exertion in her father’s haggard looks and increasing uneasiness. Although he tried to hide it from her, he was evidently dissatisfied with the progress of affairs.

“Mason assured me that I should receive interest on the money invested, and have a certain number of shares made over to me before this time,” he said, upon one occasion. “But nothing is done, and he puts me off with vexatious excuses. Not but what it’s all right, my dear, only I’m a little impatient, and shan’t feel easy until that legacy is restored to you. Where is your Aunt Margaret?” he added abruptly.

“She has gone to Nice for the remainder of the winter, I believe, sir. I saw her name among the arrivals there, in a newspaper you brought home.”

“Humph! I should like her to know that you were innocent of deceiving her in that matter of the legacy, Florence.”

Florence passed her hand lovingly down the face that was aging so fast.

“Never mind that, papa, dear. Aunt Margaret does not retain her wrath long. I thought we agreed to talk of it no more.”

He sighed, took his hat, and went out for his customary lounge about the city; and his daughter, after writing a long Italian theme, went over to Miss Denham’s rooms to practice for an hour.

Susan had given her a key, with injunctions to use it whenever she had time or inclination. Accordingly she entered without ceremony, and to her great surprise she found Julia lying on the sofa, sobbing convulsively.

Before Florence could retreat she had looked up and seen her. With the strong will of a proud woman, she sat up directly and composed herself.

“My dear Miss Heriton, don’t go away. I have had to excuse myself from lessons this morning, for my head aches intolerably. I’m fit for nothing but to lie here and listen while you play soft, dreamy melodies.”

“First let me bathe your temples with cold water, and pull down the blinds,” said Florence, proceeding to carry out her kind intentions without heeding the faint refusal. And Julia grew calmer under those soft, gentle hands that touched her hot brows so tenderly.

“You are very good-natured, Miss Heriton, and you are something more—you are an excellent sympathizer. Susan is too good to be that.”

“Rather a doubtful compliment this—is it not?” asked Florence, with a smile.

“I did not intend it for one at all. I only gave honest utterance to my feelings. I mean that Susan, never being tempted to step out of the regular routine she has made for herself, cannot understand those who stand less firmly nor pity their weaknesses.”

“I have formed a very different estimate of your cousin’s character,” said Florence, rather surprised at the tone of Julia’s remarks. “I should think she was very pitiful to all who need her compassion.”

“Yes; if any one had actually done wrong, Susan would be an invaluable friend—so merciful, yet so just. But she cannot sympathize with my chafings against all the petty annoyances of poverty. If I were to say how I long to be rich, to wear pretty dresses and jewelry, to ride, to drive, and have no contemptible cares about the few pounds, more or less, which I spend, she would answer with something about being content with what we have got. And I’m not contented. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Florence, looking at her thoughtfully. “I, too, often wish to be independent of the wearing anxiety about money that oppresses all those who have not enough of it. But I don’t think it is for my own sake—it is on papa’s account.”

Julia turned her head away.

“Neither do I crave riches solely for myself,” she said, in low tones. “But I’m not as free from ambition as you are, and so I’ll not deny it. Sit down, Miss Heriton, will you? I want to talk to you—I want you to tell me what sort of a person Lady Mason is.”

“A very sad, serious lady outwardly, but her dependents and the cottagers near her residence adore her.”

“Is your expression, ‘sad and serious,’ a polite way of hinting that she is a stern and unforgiving mother?” asked Julia, after a short silence.

“Certainly not. I have heard mamma say that her only fault as a parent was overindulgence to a very reckless and undutiful son.”

Julia shivered and put her hands to her head, affirming that the pain was becoming intense again. Yet the next moment she resumed her questioning remarks.

“How bitterly you speak of this handsome lieutenant! Do you know that half the ladies who know him are contesting for the honor of his hand?”

“I know nothing more of him than I have already told you,” Florence rather frigidly replied. “I am not aware that I spoke of Lieutenant Mason more harshly than I should of any one else who has been so bad a son to an excellent mother. I think I will reserve my practicing till to-morrow, Miss Denham.”

Somehow, the conversation was distasteful to her, and she was glad to make her escape. She detected beneath Julia’s apparent carelessness a deep interest in all that concerned this young man—an interest she was not disposed to foster by listening while she dilated upon his fascinations.

Julia made no further efforts to detain her; but, saying a cold adieu, drew her shawl over her face, and Florence returned home.

She had not had time to settle to any occupation when Mr. Heriton came in, breathless and excited. He so rarely returned before evening that his daughter expressed her surprise. But, taking no notice of her, he opened his desk and began to write a note. After several attempts, which his impatience and shaking hand rendered abortive, he succeeded in composing one to his satisfaction. When it was finished and addressed, he turned to Florence.

“My dear, you must go out for me; you can take a cab. I want this note delivered—personally, remember—to Lieutenant Mason, at his chambers, in the Albany.”

“Papa!” exclaimed the astonished girl, looking from the letter he held toward her, to his agitated face.

“Yes, Florence—yes, it must be done. There are rumors afloat in the city that perplex and frighten me. Yes, I’ll be candid with you—they frighten me. And I must have his assurance that they are false before I can rest.”

“But, dear papa, would it not be better to have an interview with him yourself?”

Mr. Heriton struck his hands together.

“I cannot get it, child. I have been to his chambers two—three times, and the cringing, fawning, lying servant tells me always that he is out, although others are admitted. They are weary, I suppose, of the sight of the old man who haunts them so persistently. But I cannot rest, Florence—I cannot rest until I know that our money is safe.”

She tried to soothe him—to persuade him to regard this venture as a mistake that it were better to forget; for her own conviction of the uselessness of hoping had long been deeply rooted. But he would not listen, and his excitement increased.

“I’ll not believe that he has played me false. Mason’s a gentleman and a man of honor. It’s I who am to blame for doubting him. Only take this note to him; insist on seeing him, and explain and smooth away my folly in being so fearful. Remind him that I am old, and have been terribly tried and played upon by designing men. He will listen to you, Florry, my darling, and my mind will be at ease. Only go, dear, quickly!”

It was impossible to refuse this pitiful appeal, and, though much against her will, Florence went. She did not take a cab, for the simple reason that she had not sufficient silver in her purse to pay for it, but walked as briskly as she could, devising as she went the best way of addressing the lieutenant so as to draw from him the truth.

The manservant who answered her inquiry for his master bore out Mr. Heriton’s description of him, for his countenance was a villainous one. But he was extremely respectful, begging the young lady to take a chair in an antechamber while he went to see whether Lieutenant Mason was in.

Florence, who declined his civility and remained standing, had heard voices in an inner room. These were hushed when the man entered, and then some one audibly asked:

“Good-looking, did you say?”

“One of the prettiest creatures I’ve seen for a long time, sir,” she heard the man answer.

Instinctively she drew her veil over the face that was crimsoning with resentment, and stepped nearer the door. But the man was already returning to ask her name.

She gave it with reluctance, and while awaiting the issue the door behind her opened, and a gentleman, whose bronzed face was half concealed by an Oriental-looking beard, entered the room, glanced at its veiled occupant, bowed, and retreated to the window.

The lieutenant’s servant came back with his fawning civility fast changing into insolence.

“My master really cannot see you to-night, miss. He is particularly engaged. You can leave a message if you like.”

In the presence of a stranger Florence felt herself compelled to curb her indignation at this rude treatment.

“Take this note to Lieutenant Mason,” she said haughtily, “and tell him that I am waiting for a reply to it. I must again request an interview with him.”

The man began to mutter something, but she checked him with an imperious “Deliver my message, sir!” And, a scowl settling down on his face, he obeyed.

The stranger had turned round at the sound of her voice, and was eying her so keenly that she was glad to bend over the leaves of a pamphlet lying on the table before her to avoid his scrutiny.

In a very short space of time the man came back, saucier than ever.

“My master really cannot see you to-night, Miss Heriton, so it’s no use your staying. I’m to tell you that he’ll write or come to you in the morning.”

Too angry to trust her voice to reply, Florence instantly quitted the room. As she passed through the door she heard the strange gentleman eagerly demand:

“Who did you say? What did you call that lady?”

The answer was inaudible. But Florence, in passionate anger that her name should be repeated by the lips of the vile pander to his master’s vices, clenched her hands, and wished herself a man, that she might punish his insolence as it merited.

Then a feeling of annoyance at her father’s thoughtlessness in exposing her to such rudeness came across her; but that was quickly forgotten as she recollected how utterly her errand had failed, and the disappointment he would suffer in consequence.

Pausing and retracing her steps, she looked up at the brightly lighted windows, and began to ask herself if she had been sufficiently urgent in her efforts to see the lieutenant. As she thought this, some one came from the house. It was the stranger; and, ashamed to have been seen by any one lingering there, Florence hurried away, nor relaxed her quick pace till, with sinking heart, she entered the dull street where her father was anxiously awaiting her.

CHAPTER VI.

SHATTERED HOPES.

It would be as useless as unpleasant to dilate on Mr. Heriton’s disappointment and anger when Florence related the issue of her visit to Lieutenant Mason. He had anticipated so much from the interview that his vexation was excessive. Perhaps he scarcely acknowledged to himself the whole of the motives which influenced him when he insisted that his daughter should be the bearer of his note; but certain it is that he had secretly hoped much from the effect that he expected Florence’s beauty and grace would have upon the gay and dissipated lieutenant.

His angry speeches, full of childish petulance, were heard in pitying silence, for Florence clearly saw what the end must be, and in her deep compassion for the utter wreck of his hopes forgot her annoyance at the folly with which he had suffered himself to be duped by every knave with whom he came in contact. But her forbearing affection would not calm his restless misery, and when two days elapsed without Lieutenant Mason fulfilling his promise of calling or writing, Mr. Heriton took to his bed, worn out with suspense and anxiety.

“You must go to him again, my darling,” he said imploringly, as Florence stood by his bedside, trying to soothe him into a calmer mood. “Don’t draw back and look at me so! I must know how I am situated with him. If I were but young and strong as I used to be, I would take him by the throat and compel him to refund the money. Go to him, Florence. He is making thousands by this company; he has acknowledged as much more than once; and our pitiful hundreds are nothing in his eyes. Go and bid him return them. I know of a better investment, and you shall yet have your legacy doubled, my poor child.”

“Dear papa, have patience!” pleaded his daughter. “He may come yet. If not, were it not better to submit ourselves to the loss?”

“Pshaw! You have preached these words to me till I am sick of hearing you! Go to Lieutenant Mason. At such an early hour as this he must be at home; and if you choose to persevere, I am sure you will be able to see him.”

“But, dear papa, remember how uselessly I strove before,” said Florence, shrinking from the hateful task.

He started up in bed, every limb quivering with rage.

“Ungenerous girl, have you no feeling for me? Will you let me lie here and die with the anguish and misery of such uncertitude? But I am a fool to ask you this. What do you care for my sufferings? If you dared you would tell me, as my sister Margaret does, that they are my own fault. Leave the room, that I may dress, and do my errand myself!”

“You are too weak to attempt it, sir,” cried Florence, restraining him as he was about to rise. “Only tell me what you wish me to say, and I will go.”

Pacified by this assurance, he gave her ample directions; and, hurrying on her hat and mantle, she trod the way to the Albany once more. She would not think of herself or of the annoyance she underwent on the former occasion, but passed steadily on, intent only upon getting such an explanation from the lieutenant as should set the vexed question of the money at rest forever.

“He will palter with me, perhaps,” she said to herself, “or try to put me off with vague promises, as he has done poor papa; but I must be quietly firm, and refuse to be satisfied with anything but the plain facts of the case. Papa said I was not persevering enough before. He shall not have to say this again. For his sake I will be wary, and obstinate even to rudeness.”

Her courage rose with the occasion, and when her tap at the outer door of the chambers was answered with a careless “Come in,” she stepped forward resolutely.

The servant of Lieutenant Mason was sitting at the table, looking over some accounts. He stared at her insolently, but neither rose nor offered her a seat.

“Your master has not fulfilled his promise of visiting or writing to us,” said Florence. “I will thank you to tell him that I am here. I will not detain him long, but my business is too urgent to be delayed again.”

The man dipped his pen in the ink, and answered, with an impertinent sneer:

“Dear me! Ladies are always in such a hurry that everything must serve their turn. But unfortunately, miss, you’ll have to wait, whether you like it or no, for master’s not in.”

“Then I will wait till he returns,” she said firmly.

A sinister smile passed over his face.

“Well, really, miss, it won’t be worth your while, for I heard him say as he went that he should contrive to make Brompton in his round. He’s more than one person waiting there to see him—some near neighbors of yours, for instance.”

Disdaining to notice this insinuation, Florence hesitated a moment.

“Are you quite sure that he intended calling this morning?”

“Positive,” the man answered glibly. “He says, says he——”

Before he could finish his sentence, the door of the inner room was thrown open. The foreign-looking stranger Florence had seen on her previous visit emerged from it, and, seizing the fellow by the collar, shook him till he shrieked for mercy, and then flung him on the ground.

“Scoundrel!” he exclaimed furiously. “Villain without a heart! Did you forget that there was some one at hand to refute your falsehoods? Has not your wretched master worked evil enough, that you make use of his name to hatch more?”

The man cowered in the corner where he had been thrown—shielding his head with his arm, as if he feared another attack.

“’Pon my word, sir,” he answered servilely, “’pon my word, you are too hard upon me—you are indeed! I’m only doing as I was bid.”

With a contemptuous execration, the gentleman turned from him to Florence, whom his unexpected appearance had stupefied. His voice lowered to tones of the utmost gentleness and compassion as he addressed her.

“I regret that I have alarmed you, but this rascal’s audacity put me into such a passion that I could not control myself. I am sorry to say that he has been willfully deceiving you.”

She could not speak; but her startled glance wandered from his bronzed face to the crouching figure of the servant, who had gathered himself farther from the powerful arm of the indignant stranger.

“Can you bear to hear the truth,” he asked, “even if it be worse—far worse, perhaps, than you have ever anticipated?”

“Yes,” she faltered; “yes.”

Studiously averting his looks so that he might not distress her by appearing to watch the effect of his words, he said slowly:

“Lieutenant Mason is no longer in London—in fact, he has quitted England. Coming here this morning to take possession of these chambers, which their former tenant vacated yesterday, I accidentally learned that he had left the country, solely, I fear, to avoid the reproaches of the unfortunates who have invested their money in the bankrupt company of which he was secretary. And this rascal, it appears to me, has been bribed to tell spurious tales accounting for his absence, until he is beyond all fear of pursuit.”

Long as Florence had foreboded evil, the shock was hard to bear when it actually came; and, putting out her hand, she tried to grasp at the table for support. The stranger was by her side directly. He placed her in a chair, and fetched her a glass of water. When he came back with it she had covered her pale face with her hands and found relief in tears. Her poor father! How would he bear these tidings?

Ashamed to have given way to her emotions before indifferent persons, Florence silently rejected the water, bowed her thanks, and, drawing her veil more closely over her features, rose to depart; but the gentleman attempted to detain her.

“You are not fit to go alone. This news, which it grieved me to tell, has quite overcome you. Pardon me, but have you no friend I could send for whose presence would be a comfort to you now?”

She shook her head, and made another attempt to pass him.

“Your father?” he said hesitatingly. “Your father?”

Her tears burst forth afresh, and she could no longer control them. With nerves weakened by constant anxiety, and harassed by Mr. Heriton’s incessant calls upon her time and sympathy, she was ill fitted to bear this confirmation of her worst fears.

Clasping her hands, she murmured:

“Poor, dear papa! Who shall tell him this?”

And then struggled for composure till her sobs became hysterical.

She was in no condition to walk home, and at the command of the stranger the lieutenant’s servant fetched a cab, to which, with the respectful tenderness of a brother, he supported her trembling steps.

She tried to command her voice to thank him, but in vain. He understood her, however.

“Hush—hush! I have done nothing. I came too late. But if Godfrey Mason ever crosses my path, I will avenge your wrongs, Miss Heriton, and my own!”

Startled by the emphasis with which he spoke, and a certain something in his tones which thrilled through her and awoke long-forgotten memories, Florence for the first time looked fully in his face; but those knitted brows, that dark skin, and the profuse masses of curly beard and mustache which covered the lower part of it, baffled her endeavor to recall when and where she had seen it before. And the gentleman, as soon as he caught her quick, eager glance, drew his low-crowned hat down over his eyes, and, signaling the driver to proceed quickly, retreated, as if desirous of avoiding recognition.

Once on her way home, the bitter energy of his last words and all else concerning him was forgotten in the more pressing thought of how Lieutenant Mason’s flight was to be revealed to her father.

She grew sick with dread as she pictured the state of mind into which he would be thrown when no longer able to delude himself with false hopes. Dismissing the vehicle at the end of the street, she walked slowly toward her own residence; but when her hand would have raised the knocker her heart sank again, and, crossing the road, she went to the lodgings of Susan Denham.

Here she could bathe her eyes, and, perhaps, from that kind friend’s sympathy and counsels, gain strength to bear with her father’s passionate grief.

The cousins were sitting at needlework when she entered—Julia’s tasteful fingers devising new trimmings for one of the pretty Parisian costumes so becoming to her fine figure, while Susan was altering one of her gray merinos for an orphan girl in whom she was interested.

They both arose, uttering expressions of concern, when they saw the jaded looks of their visitor.

“Something has happened!” cried Julia, with a startled air. “Something terrible! What is it—what is it?”

“Give her time to recover herself,” interposed her more considerate cousin. “Sit down, dear Miss Heriton, and let me unfasten your cloak.”

But Julia, as if goaded by some fear that made patient waiting an impossibility, put her aside, and, throwing herself on her knees beside the silent Florence, seized her cold hands in her own feverish palms.

“Speak at once, Miss Heriton! Let us know the worst! You have been out—you have heard tidings which concern us—me—as well as yourself, else you would not be here!”

“I am more selfish than you imagine,” was the reply. “I came to Susan, because I am in great distress. I hope—ah, I hope it is a trouble which will not affect you.”

But there was a doubt and a question in Florence’s unsteady accents, and Julia felt it.

“Tell me where you have been and what you have heard,” she said, so imperiously that Susan, with a look of grave reproof, touched her shoulder.

“I have been to the Albany—to Lieutenant Mason’s chambers.”

“Ha! To tell him your doubts of his honor and honesty,” cried Julia, rising to her feet and looking proudly down upon Florence’s sad face, “to hear him indignantly refute your suspicions, and come away ashamed of your injustice. That is why you are here, is it not? You come to us to confess how cruelly you have wronged him.”

Were there no gathering doubts of his truth in her own highly strained voice? No inward conviction that she was about to hear some appalling truth making itself visible in her dilated eye, her quivering lips? Frightened at the insight she suddenly gained into this troubled heart, and at the misery she must inflict here as well as at home, Florence essayed to rise, but those hot hands held her down.

“She will not answer!” cried Julia wildly. “She is torturing me, and she knows it! Miss Heriton, what has happened? Tell me!” she added fiercely. “You shall tell me! Is he dead?”

Susan again interposed.

“Julia, you are terrifying Miss Heriton! Are you mad?”

But the kneeling girl only repeated the question: “Is he dead?” and the depth of terror in her dark orbs constrained Florence to reply:

“If you mean Lieutenant Mason, he lives; but he has fled the country to avoid his creditors.”

“Who fabricated this?” demanded her startled hearer.

“It was told to me in the presence of his manservant, who did not contradict it.”

Without speaking another word, Julia Denham passed into her bedroom, and in little more than a minute emerged in her walking attire. Her face was crimson, her lips tightly compressed, and from the wild expression of her eyes Florence shrank with terror.

Susan threw herself before her cousin.

“Dear Julia, where are you going?”

Receiving no reply, she cried more urgently than before:

“Julia, what are you about to do? What is this Lieutenant Mason to you?”

“My husband!” she answered, as she repulsed her gentle cousin, and swept proudly from the room.

CHAPTER VII.

DESERTED.

With a silent grasp of the hand, Susan and Florence parted, for the latter did not feel that her intimacy warranted any inquiries into Julia’s affairs, and she was conscious that she had stayed from her father’s side too long already. He had been sleeping for some time, the servant told her when she entered the house; and she never knew whether he thoroughly comprehended the faltering tale she told him when he awoke, for the illness he had long striven to keep at bay now prostrated him, and he lay for weeks in a distressing state of weakness. From this he slowly recovered, beneath the unwearying care of his daughter; but his mind was irreparably affected, and his memory of the past so confused that it is difficult to say what he remembered and what he had forgotten.

The lonely Florence bore up bravely through this time of trial. If saddening thoughts of those happy days when she wandered hand in hand with Frank Dormer beside the Coquet ever came to trouble her, they were quickly banished; and even her mother’s journal, which had so long fed her hopes of his return, was laid at the bottom of her desk, that she might not be tempted to read and ponder over it.

As soon as Mr. Heriton was sufficiently recovered to bear the change which his medical man prescribed as absolutely necessary for his complete restoration to health, Florence went to consult her friend Susan Denham. She must choose some locality for her new home where there was a prospect of employment, and in her utter inexperience she gladly availed herself of Susan’s greater knowledge of the world.

They had seen very little of each other during these last few weeks, for Miss Denham had increased the number of her pupils, and was now rarely to be found at home. She had stolen over sometimes to inquire after Mr. Heriton; and once, when he was considered in danger, had insisted on sharing his daughter’s night watch; but she looked so harassed and fatigued that Florence would not permit her to do this again. The name of her cousin never passed her lips; and though surprised at her reticence Florence was too delicate not to imitate it.

With the shrewdness and tact which made her an invaluable adviser, Miss Denham had already thought over the half-formed plans of her friend, and was ready to enter into and assist them as soon as the subject was broached.

“You will want to get a few miles from town, and your lodgings must be cheap, yet respectable; the owners of the house must also be persons with whom you could safely leave Mr. Heriton during your own enforced absences.”

“Certainly. But will it not be difficult to procure such a home? I have looked down the columns of the daily papers to try and find something to suit us, until I am quite tired of the useless endeavors.”

Susan smiled slightly.

“Dear Miss Heriton, you must not expect too much. The ‘moderate terms’ of advertisers would still be, I fear, far beyond your limited means.”

“I will not be too particular,” cried Florence, coloring. “Indeed, it is only for papa’s sake that I am anxious to have rooms that will not too forcibly remind him of our changed fortunes. In fact, I must be prudent. Some one—I think it must have been Aunt Margaret—sent me anonymously a hundred pounds soon after papa was taken ill. Carefully as I have husbanded this sum, the daily expenses are fast reducing it; so, you see, I must learn to economize and make no wry faces about it.”

This was said so cheerfully that Susan gave her a little approving nod, and went on:

“I have been thinking that you might settle in the neighborhood of Kirton-on-the-Thames. It is a pleasantly situated market town, and I have written to a lady living in the vicinity whose children I used to teach. Mrs. Railton is in want of a morning governess, and will try you on my recommendation.”

“And must I go and look for lodgings in that neighborhood?” asked Florence, her heart failing her at the idea of the task.

“I think not, if you can content yourself with the accommodation you can have at a cottage about a mile from Mrs. Railton’s villa. The old couple it belongs to are eccentric, but thoroughly kind-hearted; and Mrs. Bick nursed me so tenderly through an attack of scarlet fever that I am always grateful to her, and have more than once spent my summer holidays beneath her roof. Do you think you can content yourself in a tiny country cottage, Miss Heriton?”

“Dear Susan, you shall see that I will put aside all my fastidious likes and dislikes. Indeed, I am more in earnest than you seem to imagine,” said Florence gravely.

“I do not doubt your earnestness; I only ask myself how you will bear with the difficulties of the career you have chosen—with the requirements of exacting mothers, the obstinacy or pettishness of their children. Can you, who have been accustomed to see yourself obeyed, learn to pay respect and obedience to persons in rank and education far your inferiors?”

“It is for papa’s sake. Surely I shall never forget that! Don’t dishearten me, Susan,” poor Florence pleaded.

“I do not wish to do so; only it is necessary that you should thoroughly comprehend what you are about to undertake.”

“Well, on the score of the cottage you may be easy,” was the reply; “for our apartments over the way are neither so elegant nor spacious that we shall have cause to regret them; besides which, Mrs. Jones daily mutters in my hearing that she can’t be bothered much longer with the trouble of sick people.”

As Susan was writing a note to Mrs. Bick, and jotting down a few hints for the journey likely to be useful to such inexperienced travelers, she suddenly looked up to inquire:

“Have you written to your aunt, Mrs. Blunden, lately? Will she not interfere to prevent the necessity of this step?”

“I think not—in fact, I scarcely wish it. I have written and thanked her for the timely assistance of the bank note, but I could not see papa subjected to her harsh speeches now that he is no longer able to defend himself,” And tears sprang into Florence’s eyes at the mere thought.

The note was finished, and the friends were parting with a grateful “Thanks, dear Susan!” and a fervent “Heaven prosper you, Miss Heriton!” when a step was heard on the stair.

Such a slow, listless step, as if the very exertion of dragging the weary limbs along was too toilsome to be endured. And then the door opened, Julia Denham came in, and Florence could scarcely repress a cry of pitying astonishment.

The well-rounded figure had sharpened and wasted, the bright color had fled her cheek, and her mouth, despite its resolute set, was drawn down at the corners, and every feature lined with suffering. Her fine, dark eyes were fuller, brighter than of old, but the light in them was so hard and fierce that those who encountered her quick glances involuntarily shrank from them.

Susan gave a sigh, and murmured to Florence: “Go, dear—go!” But before she could move to obey, Julia’s eyes fell upon her. Drawing herself up more proudly than ever, she disdainfully rejected the hand Miss Heriton proffered, saying:

“Have you come to exult over me? Has Susan been regaling your ears with all the last items of scandal?”

“I have told Miss Heriton nothing,” her cousin quietly observed. “Do me more justice than to imagine that I should make your position a subject for gossip.”

“My position!” Julia angrily repeated. “What do you intend Miss Heriton to understand by that expression? Is she to join the throng of my accusers who dare to hint that I am no wife? That I invent the tale to cover my shame? As if,” she added, with increasing bitterness, “as if it were not the greatest disgrace of all to have given this hand”—dashing it violently against the table—“to a false and scheming profligate!”

Feeling the awkwardness of remaining, Florence repeated her farewells, and had nearly reached the door when Julia, with more gentleness, asked her to stay.

“Susan, perhaps, will not advise your compliance with my request, Miss Heriton; for, like the shocked matrons who no longer consider me worthy to teach their hopeful progeny, she distrusts every word I utter.

“You do—you do!” she added vehemently, when Susan gently denied this. “When you asked me where our marriage was celebrated, and I answered that I could not tell, that—trusting implicitly to his assurances that secrecy was necessary until he had established himself—I went where he chose to take me, and left the certificate of the rite in his care, you sighed and shook your head.”

“Not because I doubted your assertions, Julia; only from regret that your confidence had been so rashly given and so terribly misplaced.”

“Yes, yes—I know,” was the impatient retort. “You would like to lecture and pity me. It is to avoid this that I go out and wander in the streets and parks till utter exhaustion drives me home. I do not need you to tell me that I have my deserts. I know that my eagerness to marry a man who would make me wealthy, and give me all the social advantages I craved for, has brought me to what I am. Is there a person I pass in my wanderings who does not stare after me and whisper: ‘There goes the woman who tries to prove herself the wife of Mason, the defaulter—Mason, the rogue’?”

Susan would have spoken, but she was checked with an imperative:

“Hush! I want Miss Heriton to tell me all she heard that morning.”

Florence instantly related every detail connected with her visit to Lieutenant Mason’s chambers, feeling the while that the deserted wife would gain no information from this bare narrative, yet unwilling to offend her by appearing to withhold anything.

“Gilbert—the servant you saw—has disappeared,” commented Julia, when she paused. “There is nothing to be learned from him. But this gentleman—who is he?”

“I cannot tell you,” was the truthful answer.

“But you heard his name—surely you heard his name? Don’t deceive me, Miss Heriton.”

“I would not do so for worlds! But when I tell you that there was a certain something about his voice and gestures which seemed familiar to me, I have told all I know. I did not hear his name mentioned.”

Julia’s lips quivered, and the large drops of mental suffering stood upon her brow.

“I could have borne desertion, for my husband has taught me to despise him; but he has left the brand of shame upon me, and I cannot shake it off. He knew that I could not prove our marriage.”

There was such profound misery in her accents that Florence and Susan both moved toward her—indeed, the latter had been always gentle and patient with her wayward relative, striving by increasing her own labors to prevent Julia enduring any straits from the loss of her pupils—but they were coldly repulsed.

“There is only one thing in the world you can either of you do for me now, and that is to prove my innocence to those who have maligned me, if ever it lies in your power.”

The promise was readily given, Florence adding:

“But let us hope that Lieutenant Mason will yet repent his conduct, and return to you.”

“I have left off hoping,” said Julia, with a wan smile, as she threw her shawl over her arm and retreated to the inner room.

She came back directly with a tiny locket in her hand.

“I think I heard that you are going to leave this neighborhood, Miss Heriton. Will you wear this sometimes in remembrance of Julia Mason?”

Before Florence could accept or reject the gift she had passed to her cousin, and, laying her hands on her shoulders, looked sorrowfully in her face.

“If I were only like you, Susan—only good, patient, and contented as you have been!”

The next moment she had gone, and they heard her turn the key in the lock. Susan Denham had lost all her usual composure now, and was trembling excessively.

“Pray for her, Florence,” she whispered, “for her strange manner terrifies me. If she would weep or accept my sympathy, I should have hope of its wearing off; as it is, I know not what to do or say, and I begin to dread the result.”

Florence essayed to comfort and cheer her; but it was with more sorrow than surprise that she learned on the following morning that Julia Denham had disappeared.

Her grieved cousin sought for her fruitlessly in all directions—inserted advertisements in the newspapers, and even enlisted the services of the detectives. But Julia had glided away in her ordinary costume, taking nothing in her hand that might lead to her identification, and was as thoroughly lost as if the earth had opened and received her.

CHAPTER VIII.

A NEW HOME.

It was a bright morning in the early spring when Florence Heriton, accompanied by her father, left the dull, dirty street in Brompton to pay her first visit to the busy and pleasantly situated market town of Kirton-on-the-Thames.

Mr. Heriton, clinging to his daughter’s arm for support and guidance, was childishly gratified by the prospect of a railway journey. He began to complain of the porter for putting him into a second-class carriage, but Florence slipping a daily paper into his hand, all other grievances were forgotten in an eager inspection of the state of the money market.

When they were fairly out of sight of the tall rows of houses, amid which she had been so long immured, Florence began to breathe more freely, and her spirits to recover their natural elasticity. Work would not seem so toilsome, privations so hard to endure, when the green fields and trees were once more around her; and when they alighted at the Kirton Station, and her father began to complain of the length of the walk that followed, her smiles and merry sallies wiled him into forgetfulness of his fatigue.

Near the summit of a gentle acclivity, some two miles from the town, stood the cottage to which Susan Denham had directed them. It was close to the highroad, but no other habitation stood within some considerable distance, and a fine clump of elm trees growing in an adjacent field sheltered it from the shrill blasts of the northerly wind. It was a most unpretending building, but the ivy that had crept over the front and side, twining its tendrils even around the old brick chimney, gave it an air of comfort; and the lozenge-shaped panes of the little casements shone brightly in the morning sun.

But what most attracted the eyes of Florence were the trimly kept beds in the small forecourt or garden. Early as it was, they were gay with the gayest of spring flowers. The crocus, in its every variety of hue, from orange purple and to the palest of blue, sprang up everywhere; large clusters of snowdrops, mingled with hepaticas and early tulips; and the air was redolent with the perfume of the white and blue violets which peeped from every sheltered corner.

As Florence pressed forward to gaze upon the bright blossoms she saw that the owner of the cottage had become aware of her approach, and was standing at the gate peering at her curiously. From the description she had received, it was easy to recognize directly the good woman of whose kindness of heart Susan Denham had spoken so warmly; yet so queer was her appearance that it was scarcely possible to resist a smile.

Mrs. Bick was so tall and largely framed that she looked out of all proportion with her tiny dwelling, and her list-slippered feet, which the curtness of her narrow skirts well displayed, were positively enormous. Her only sacrifice to the Graces consisted of two bunches of bright-brown curls, which were surmounted by a net cap, surrounded by double quillings of lace. As these borders were very limp, and the curls had a tendency to slip over Mrs. Bick’s forehead whenever she stooped, they were generally awry, and the gray hairs they were intended to conceal stuck out in little fuzzy bunches above or below them.

Florence introduced herself by presenting Susan’s note. It was turned over and over dubiously, and then thrust back into her hand.

“Just read it, will ye? Dannle’s out at work, and my speckittles is indoors.”

Mrs. Bick nodded her head gravely when she had heard the contents of the missive.

“Susan Denham! Ha! that’s the quiet un. A decent young woman she was, too—very different to that highty-flighty cousin that used to pluck Dannle’s best flowers with never a ‘by your leave,’ at all. So you wants my rooms, do ye?”

“I should like to look at them and see whether they would suit me,” answered Florence, a little perplexed between the easy familiarity of Mrs. Bick’s address and the gathering frowns with which Mr. Heriton was listening to it.

“Look and welcome. My place is clean if ’tain’t nothing else. Have ye got ere a pin about ye to pin up them long skirts? For Dannle’s ginger (Virginia) stock is a-coming out in the borders, and he can’t abide to see it broken off.”

Florence humored the woman by drawing her dress carefully around her as she followed her tall form up the narrow pathway.

“It’s a silly fancy, them flowers, for poor folks like we,” said Mrs. Bick, turning round when she reached the porch and confidentially addressing her visitors, “and so I’ve told Dannle times out o’ mind. If he took to anything, he might ha’ took to a pig or fowls; or even rabbits’d been better than nothing, for there’s many a good meal to be had off of them; but there’s neither vittles nor drink in flowers, and they’re here to-day and gone to-morrow, aren’t they? Such rubbidge for poor folk like we to take up wi’, ain’t it?”

She saved them the trouble of replying by throwing open the door of a small and sparely furnished but exquisitely clean sitting room. The sun shone in pleasantly, the broad window seats were filled with luxuriant and choice plants, and the little parlor wore altogether such a snug, cheerful aspect that Mr. Heriton seated himself in a chintz-covered easy-chair in the sunniest corner, and smiled contentedly.

The chambers above were equally neat, and Mrs. Bick’s terms so unusually moderate that Florence closed with her at once. It would be easier to begin her new life in this secluded spot than in the dense atmosphere and depressing influences of town lodgings; and even Mrs. Bick’s rustic familiarity galled her far less than the vulgar sympathy of the London landlady, who never brought up her bill or receipted it without telling Florence that she had known what it was to be better off herself, and so she could feel for other people.

“Then I shall expect ye to-morrow,” said Mrs. Bick, with a nod that brought her brown curls nearly into her eyebrows. “The old gentleman don’t look very strong. Wait while I fetches him a drop o’ my currant wine to set him up afore he goes.”

Mr. Heriton graciously accepted the simple refreshment. And while their hostess again strode away to cut him a slice of plain cake his daughter fondly asked:

“Dear papa, do you think you can be happy here for a little while?”

“Well, yes, child,” he answered briskly. “While you were looking at the rooms above I have been talking to a laborer at work in the adjoining ground, and I learn that it is the property of a building society, and that the members are willing to dispose of it on reasonable terms.”

“But this is nothing to us, dear papa,” said Florence, her spirits sinking, “nothing to us, remember.”

“Nonsense, child! Don’t you see what an excellent speculation it will be to take this ground on a long lease, and build a terrace of handsome houses upon it?”

For a few minutes his daughter was inclined to give up all thought of coming here to reside, lest he should really attempt to carry out this new idea. But remembering that his utterly penniless condition rendered it an impossibility, she took heart again, and contented herself with observing:

“This must be an after consideration, papa. Remember that we are not provided with the requisite cash for such an undertaking.”

He answered her peevishly:

“Of course—of course; I remember all this. But something will turn up, or I shall find a friend to advance the money. You shall sketch me your idea of the frontage, Florence. I’ll go and pace the ground while you finish your chat with the good woman.”

It was a comfort to learn in answer to her inquiries that the property in question was in the hands of a wary lawyer, not likely to be easily persuaded into parting with it; and, reminding herself that Mr. Heriton’s ruling passion was likely to crop out, go wherever she would, Florence concluded her arrangements, and prepared to depart.

As she waited at the gate for her father, who was immersed in measurements and calculations, Mrs. Bick nodded the brown ringlets in the direction of a very feeble little old man who was tottering toward them.

“That’s my Dannle. Poor old chap! He be a’most past work, and yet he will potter about his garden every spare minute. Dannle,” she shrieked, as soon as he came within hearing, “I’ve let the rooms to miss here and her pa; and there’s two buds on the white rangium; I seen ’em just now for the first time.”

Daniel Bick took off his hat to the young lady, and smiled pleasantly at his wife’s information. But he was a man of few words; and his gratification at Florence’s gentle commendation of his flowers was only shown by his gathering a lovely little bouquet of violets and snowdrops, and silently putting them into her hand.

“Well, now,” was his wife’s comment, “’tain’t often Dannle does that for anybody. I reckon he likes you a’ready. I’ll have the beds well aired, trust me; and now I must go and see to my old man’s dinner.”

As Florence turned at the foot of the hill to nod another adieu to the old man, who still stood at the gate watching her graceful figure, a gentleman rode rapidly toward them on a spirited bay mare.

Mr. Heriton was so deeply absorbed in his contemplation of the eligible investment that as he walked backward he would have been run over but for his daughter’s warning cry and the promptness of the rider, who sharply wheeled his animal aside as soon as he saw the danger.

As, with a polite expression of regret, he lifted his hat, their eyes met, and Florence recognized the bearded stranger of the Albany. He, too, knew her again, and seemed disposed to address her; but, checking the impulse, he bowed low, and rode on again more rapidly than before.

CHAPTER IX.

ALONE IN THE WORLD.

A few days found Florence settled in her new home, and recognized as the instructress of Mrs. Railton’s daughters. It was fortunate for her that Susan Denham had warned her to expect many anxieties and unpleasantries in the duties she had undertaken, otherwise her inexperience and natural sensitiveness to slights and unkindness would have made her throw them up in disgust. As it was, both her patience and fortitude were greatly tried; for Mrs. Railton—a most indulgent mother—had no control over her unruly offspring; and the schoolroom was a scene of noise and contention that had made more than one governess resign in despair. Perhaps Florence’s innate dignity assisted in awing the young rebels with whom she found herself brought into contact; and the determination to persevere, let her difficulties be as great as they might, was ultimately crowned with success.

But ere the hour arrived when she could aver with truth that her pupils were docile and even affectionate, she had passed through a long and fatiguing ordeal. The spring had been followed by summer, and summer, in its turn, was merging into the deep-russet tints of autumn.

Mr. Heriton had never thoroughly recovered strength; but he was able to wander about the fields adjoining Mrs. Bick’s cottage, and plan out the villa residences with which he intended to adorn it as soon as he could find money for the purpose. Those few persons he encountered, and to whom he divulged his intentions, and talked largely of his former grandeur, came to regard him as a harmless lunatic, and either humored his fancies or avoided him. Mrs. Bick, who saw the reluctance with which his daughter left him to attend her pupils, and the alarm she felt if he were missing at her return, good-naturedly endured many a long detail to keep him quietly at home. Mr. Heriton, pleased to have so patient a listener, would fetch out his papers, and sketch, and plan, and lose himself in endless calculations, while Mrs. Bick, knitting in hand, would sit by and nod and doze until the curls dropped over the bridge of her nose and awoke her.

When the glorious harvest moon arose, and nightly flooded the fair earth with her radiance, it seemed too beautiful to stay indoors, and Florence would wander up and down the garden, while her father joined Daniel Bick in the porch. There was a seat on either side, and the two old men would rest there, sometimes chatting sociably, but more frequently silent, for there was little in common between them but their feebleness. Sometimes when Florence drew near she would hear her father talking in the eager, restless way she so disliked, about the fortune he yet intended to amass, and the best manner of accomplishing it. If an answer were demanded, old Daniel generally gave it in some quaint proverb or text from the only book he ever read—his Bible.

“It may be a great thing to be rich, master,” she heard him say one evening in his shrill, quavering voice, “but enough’s as good as a feast; and if the Almighty be with us, what more should we want?”

“True—true. You are a well-meaning man,” Mr. Heriton made answer; “but you have no one’s future to be anxious about as I have. Think of my daughter, the heiress and sole representative of the Heritons! Do you suppose I can be contented until I have restored her to her proper position in society?”

“Heaven bless her!” said Daniel. “I dunno why ye need be troubled about her, master. She’s a good daughter to your old age, and ye know there’s a promise for them as honor their father and mother.”

“True—true. But if I could realize a few thousands and invest them in her name——” Mr. Heriton began, but Daniel’s tremulous accents again checked him.

“Excuse me, master, but don’t ye think ye turn your mind too much to the gold and silver and forget the more precious things that’s laid up for all on us in heaven?”

There was a silence; and Florence stayed her light footstep on the gravel to listen for her father’s reply. It was spoken with unusual earnestness:

“My friend, I’m afraid you are right. I’m terribly afraid that I have not thought half so much of these things as I ought to have done. But I’ll alter, Heaven helping me. I tell you what we’ll do, my good Daniel: every night before we sleep my daughter shall read to us all. It will do me good. I always sleep better when her sweet voice is the last sound in my ears.”

Florence moved noiselessly away, and, lifting her face to the calm sky above, prayed that her father’s resolves might not be futile ones, but that the simple remonstrance of old Daniel might induce him to try and subdue the feverish craving for wealth which blighted their otherwise peaceful existence.

Mrs. Bick, who had been to Kirton on an errand, came to the gate as she approached it, and, leaning her arms upon it, stood there to rest.

“It’s been a terrible hot walk,” she panted. “I was glad enough to get back again; but I heerd a bit o’ news in the town as’ll s’prise my Dannle. Orwell Court’s let—that big house through the turnpike as I told ye Dannle used to work at when he were a boy.”

Florence remembered it directly, for in one of the few walks she had persuaded her father to take they had approached this untenanted mansion, and had been civilly invited to enter the grounds by the person in charge. Orwell Court was an old house of most irregular form, for it had been originally a mere cottage, to which one after another of its owners had made additions. But the situation was excellent, and the half orchard, half park which surrounded it was so full of exquisite bits of scenery that Florence regretted her inability to stay and sketch them.

“I am glad to hear that it is let. It was a thousand pities for so charming a spot to remain empty. Who has taken it?”

She smiled at herself for asking this question, as she was not likely to recognize any name Mrs. Bick might mention; but the answer had an unexpected interest of its own.

“He’s a Mr. Ayl——something—Ayling or Aylwinne; yes, that’s it—Aylwinne. He’s a very rich Ingyman, and a friend o’ Mr. Lumley’s at the little church in the village just beyond. He’s a dark-faced gentleman, with a beard as thick and as dark as I dunno what, and such a pair of eyes! You’ve seen him, ain’t ye?”

“When?” asked Florence, rather confusedly.

“Why, a-riding by on a big brown horse. I ha’ seen him two or three times when I’ve been pottering about here among Dannle’s flowers; an’ he always looks and looks at one as he goes by just as though he wanted to speak and didn’t like. I guessed as this was the Ingyman as soon as they began talking about him in the shop where I went for my tea and sugar.”

Leaving Mrs. Bick still resting at the gate, Florence strolled along the path, musing as she went on the curious circumstance of this stranger taking up his residence in the neighborhood of her own. It seemed as if it were their fate to encounter each other. At all events, she might reasonably expect to see him frequently, for the church near Orwell Court was the one she regularly attended, in preference to the more crowded one in Kirton, partly because the walk to it was through pleasant, shady lanes, and by the side of a little river, and partly because she liked the clergyman—a quiet, earnest man, who had called frequently on Mr. Heriton, and testified a friendly interest in him.

As Florence drew near the silent figures in the porch, a cloud swept over the moon, and the rising wind sighed so mournfully that a shiver crept through her frame.

Laying her hand on her father’s arm, she said:

“It grows cold, papa, dear. Will you not come in?”

He neither moved nor replied, but continued to sit as before, leaning forward, and apparently gazing intently at old Daniel, whose pipe had dropped from his hand, and whose head had fallen back against the trelliswork that supported the honeysuckle growing over it.

Startled, she scarce knew why, Florence also leaned forward, and, the moon just then emerging from the shadowing cloud, she saw the old man’s features distinctly. It was the face of the dead! Without sign or struggle, Daniel Bick’s life had passed away, and the unconscious partner of its joys and sorrows was a widow.

Florence’s first impulse was to shriek for help; her next, to try and arouse her father, whose strange immobility added to her terror.

“Come away, papa—come away! We must break the news gently to the poor wife. Papa, do you not hear me? Speak—pray speak!”

But Mr. Heriton remained insensible to her tears and prayers. The shock of Daniel Bick’s sudden decease, acting on his own weakened frame, had brought on an attack of paralysis; and between his terrible state of helpless unconsciousness and the noisy grief of Mrs. Bick, Florence was almost distracted.

The doctor, whom a compassionate neighbor hurried to fetch, inquired if Miss Heriton had no friend who could come to her, and she gave him the address of Susan Denham. But Susan had been drawn from London by a report that her unhappy cousin had been seen at Portsmouth, and, owing to an illness brought on by her long and fruitless quest, did not receive the letter until some weeks after it was written.

Before the expiration of that time Florence was fatherless. Mr. Heriton recovered consciousness about an hour before his death; and, as if for the first time really recognizing the depth of his child’s affection, he laid his hand on her bowed head and blessed her in words that sent a grateful throb through her heart long afterward.

Mr. Lumley, the clergyman already mentioned, was with him in that last hour; and he came daily to the cottage till he saw that Florence had overcome the first violence of her grief.

Mrs. Bick refused to be comforted under her bereavement by anything he could urge.

“I knows Dannle’s better off, sir,” she would answer, “and I knows that if he’s only near enough to the Lord’s garden to see them flowers as never fades he’s happy enough; but this ’ere’s the place I’ve lived in all my days along wi’ he, and nobody’ll never make me believe as I can settle down comferable anywhere else.”

“Then why leave your cottage?” Mr. Lumley inquired.

“Because I’ve got to. I can’t live upon nothing, an’ there’s a home for me along wi’ my sister; but it’s like being prisoned or emegrated; and I must fret, for I can’t help it.”

“Then Mrs. Bick’s change of residence will involve your removal, Miss Heriton?” the clergyman observed.

“I suppose so,” answered Florence dejectedly. “Indeed, I must have left under any circumstances, for I have here a note from Mrs. Railton stating that her children were so intolerably troublesome that she was obliged to fill up my place directly, and the young lady seems to suit so well that she shall not like to dismiss her.”

“May I inquire what you propose doing?”

Florence put her hands to her brow.

“I scarcely know. I suppose I must return to London; but it is of little consequence—I have no one to exert myself for now.”

Mr. Lumley waited till the sobs that burst forth as she said this had been checked; then he said gently:

“Will you promise to come to no decision respecting your movements until I have seen you again? I fancy I know of something that will suit you. Will you wait until I can tell you more?”

Grateful for his kindness, Florence gave the required promise. A new phase in her checkered life was about to commence. Who can wonder if she gladly clung to the only friendly hand held forth to guide her in it, or that her mother’s diary was again brought forth and the page that held out the long-deferred hope of Frank Dormer’s return blistered with her tears?

CHAPTER X.

MRS. WILSON.

Mr. Lumley called on the following day, accompanied by a very small, slight lady, in the deep mourning of a widow. She was evidently of a nervous temperament, and the excitement of driving herself and the clergyman in a little pony carriage had flushed and agitated her so much that it took her a few minutes to recover breath and composure before she could go through the ceremony of introduction. Then she discovered that a small black bag, which contained her cardcase and handkerchief, was missing, and Mr. Lumley good-naturedly offered to relieve her distress by going and searching for it in the carriage.

When he had gone, Florence, who, in compassion to the lady’s tremors, had kept aloof from the armchair in which she sat sniffing hard at a vinaigrette, ventured to quietly approach.

“Will you let me take your bonnet for a few minutes? This room is so warm.”

“Thank you—thank you!” was the answer, spoken gratefully, though in the same hurried, faltering manner. “You are very kind! But my hair—I’m afraid my hair is scarcely——” And then she made an awkward pause, but went on again in another minute: “I think I’ll loosen my shawl while I stay.”

And her fluttering hands began to drag at the brooch that secured it, but with such evident obliviousness of where the fastening began and ended that Florence stooped down and took it off for her.

This simple action did much toward restoring the lady’s equanimity, and when Florence proceeded to put a stool under her feet and arrange the window curtains so that the sun should not shine too fully into the flushed face of her visitor, she was thanked quite warmly.

“My dear, I’m giving you a great deal of trouble. And at such a time as this, too!”

And the lady’s troubled, sympathetic look rested on Florence’s black dress.

“It does me good to forget myself a while,” she answered gently. “Will you have a little water, or a glass of wine?”

“No, thank you. Pray sit down; I cannot bear to see you stand. You are so different to what I expected to find you that I think I shall be able to talk quite freely to you.”

Florence smiled faintly at this frank confession.

“What did you expect me to be like?”

The lady fidgeted with the folds of her dress.

“Oh, pray forgive me for making such a foolish remark; but Mr. Lumley had impressed it upon me so much that you had been—been differently circumstanced, that I could not help getting worried and uneasy lest I should hurt your feelings. I hope,” she added anxiously, “that I am not doing so now.”

“Not at all, dear madam. I am sure you are here with the kindest intentions.”

The little lady looked inexpressibly relieved.

“Thank you—thank you! If ever a doubt of my meaning should arise, pray set it down to my foolish nervousness, and not to deliberate unkindness, for I had a daughter once.” Her voice quivered a little as she said this, and her thin white fingers clutched Florence’s arm. “I can very seldom trust myself to speak of her, but for her sake my heart yearns to the young and—and sorrowful.”

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Florence put her lips to the hand that had now slid into her own, and the little lady, warned by the tears gathering in the orphan’s eyes, began to talk more cheerfully.

“I quite hope we shall understand and like each other. My name is Wilson, and I have come to you——”

Mr. Lumley’s entrance interrupted her. He had found the missing bag, and nodded good-humoredly when he saw the confidential attitude the ladies had taken.

“Then you have introduced yourself, Mrs. Wilson! That’s right! And is Miss Heriton inclined to accept your proposals?”

“I don’t know yet. I have scarcely had time to ask her.”

Mr. Lumley looked at his watch; his leisure was limited, and he had purposely lingered outside to give Mrs. Wilson an opportunity of speaking openly. She saw his impatient glance, and rose directly.

“I am keeping you waiting. I am so sorry! Perhaps it would be better, as I am such a timid driver, for you to take the carriage back, and let me walk. I am sure I can manage it, and I would not waste your valuable time for the world!”

“I have still ten minutes to spare, and I could not think of letting you walk back such a distance,” Mr. Lumley decidedly replied. “If you will kindly say what you wish to Miss Heriton at once, I shall be glad.”

But she was in such a state of confusion between her uneasiness on his account and the difficulty of rearranging her shawl, that he had to make the necessary explanation of their errand himself.

“Mrs. Wilson wishes to know, Miss Heriton, if you are inclined to take upon yourself the charge of two children now on their way from India, to be placed in her motherly care? Their guardian offers a liberal salary, and I think I can promise you on his part all proper respect and consideration.”

“Should I be required to reside in the house?” asked Florence. “For I must confess that I should prefer a home of my own, even though it will be but a lonely one.”

Mrs. Wilson now interposed.

“My dear, you are too young to do this. I am afraid you think I am fidgety, and might be too interfering; but you would have your own sitting room, and I am very much taken up with my housekeeping duties. I should never think of coming into your apartments unless you were ill or low-spirited. And anything you can propose—any stipulations you like to make—shall certainly be adhered to.”

“You speak as if you would be the obliged party, dear madam, instead of me,” Florence answered, after a few moments given to consideration. “You are very good, and if you and Mr. Lumley think me fitted for the situation you offer, I shall be pleased to accept it.”

She did not say this without an effort. To enter a family as resident governess was renouncing the little remnant of independence she had been cherishing, but in her isolated position it would have been both rash and ungrateful to refuse.

“Then it is settled?” asked Mrs. Wilson. “I am very glad. And when will you come to me, my dear Miss Heriton? I am very busy getting the house into order—Orwell Court, you know. And your advice and suggestions in the arrangement of the books and pictures will be such an assistance to me. Could you come to-morrow?”

“Orwell Court!” Florence repeated. “I thought—that is, I understood——” And then, ashamed to repeat Mrs. Bick’s gossiping and apparently mistaken details, she hastily said: “Not to-morrow, but the following day, if you like. Mrs. Bick’s sister will be here by that time; I should not care to leave her alone.”

“Very well. Then a carriage shall be sent for you and your trunks at whatever hour will suit you,” Mrs. Wilson answered. When this point was settled she turned to Mr. Lumley, who was waiting to hand her into their vehicle, and said, with a little air of triumph: “You can’t think how glad I am that we have arranged this business so nicely. I was quite worried about it, and have wished over and over again that Mr. Aylwinne had not delegated it to me.”

Florence, who was fastening her brooch, looked up so inquiringly that the lady saw it and kindly asked:

“What is it, my dear? Is there anything I have forgotten to say?”

“Only that I do not know who Mr. Aylwinne is, or what he has to do with our arrangements.”

Mrs. Wilson looked dreadfully perplexed, and arrested Mr. Lumley’s movements as he was leading her to the door.

“Haven’t you told Miss Heriton? Haven’t you explained to her?”

“My dear madam,” answered the clergyman, whose patience was fast waning, “I have had no opportunity for explanation. I left all that sort of thing to you.”

“And she does not even know who Mr. Aylwinne is!” cried Mrs. Wilson, in dismay.

“That I can soon tell her. Miss Heriton, Mr. Aylwinne is an old college friend of mine, who has lately purchased Orwell Court. And I have such certain knowledge of his goodness of heart that I think I can fairly promise you a happy home beneath his roof. Now, my dear Mrs. Wilson, we really must go, for I have visits to pay to some sick persons that cannot be put off.”

With another apology for her tardiness, Mrs. Wilson made such a hurried exit that she forgot to bid Florence adieu; but remembered the omission as she was stepping into the carriage, and ran back to rectify it.

“Good-by, my dear—good-by! How rude you must think me! I will send for you punctually to the hour, so mind and be ready.”

The next minute she was gone, and Florence, a little bewildered by her visit and its consequences, sat down to think. Then Mrs. Bick was right, after all, and the dark, bearded stranger of the Albany was the Mr. Aylwinne who had taken Orwell Court. If she had known this sooner, nothing would have induced her to accept the situation which she had just agreed to fill; and even as it was she was very much disposed to write and decline it. She felt an invincible repugnance to encounter again a person in some degree connected with her painful visits to Lieutenant Mason’s chambers. Yet on what plea could she now draw back? Mrs. Wilson might be easily put off with some plausible excuse, but to the more keen and penetrating Mr. Lumley she must give the actual reason for her change of mind. And how paltry it would appear to confess that she disliked meeting a person from whom she had received nothing but the most considerate kindness.

“I am afraid,” mused Florence, “that this is a remnant of the foolish pride of birth I have often promised myself to subdue. I wish I had Susan Denham here to advise me.”

Ignorant of her friend’s absence from London, she had been looking daily for an answer to the letter she had written announcing her father’s decease, and the changes which had consequently arisen in her plans. Florence had been secretly expecting that Susan would write and press her to share her apartments; and with a lingering hope that this long-looked-for missive would come by the morning’s post, and afford her a plausible pretext for declining the situation at Orwell Court, she went to rest, still undecided and dissatisfied.

CHAPTER XI.

THE STRANGER FROM INDIA.

No letter came from Susan Denham; and after wavering until there was scarcely time left for the necessary packing, Florence resolved to put pride steadily under her feet, and enter cheerfully upon her new duties.

It cost her a pang to leave the little cottage where her father’s stormy, restless life had found a haven; and Mrs. Bick wept noisily at their parting.

“I dunno, after all, whether I ain’t glad I’m going right away,” said the poor old woman, “for I could never abide the place when there’s nobody in it as I cares about. Master Weddell have took to it, and he have promised he won’t root up Dannle’s flowers. Ye’ll have a look in as ye goes by sometimes, miss, won’t ye, and see if he keep his word?”

This Florence readily consented to do, and then they parted—the old woman blessing the young with a rugged eloquence that came from the heart.

“I’ll never forget ye, miss. I ain’t much of a hand at saying what I thinks, but I’ll never forget your name in my prayers. I shall always think them was my happiest times when I see your sweet face every day.”

As Florence stepped into the carriage sent from Orwell Court, with Mrs. Bick’s last words ringing in her ears, her spirits became greatly depressed. Those had been happy days—those days of actual poverty and daily labor; and she might well ask herself what would be her lot in the future to which she had no clue. Never before had her loneliness been felt so thoroughly as now, and despite her utmost efforts to appear composed, Mrs. Wilson’s warm greeting on her arrival was met with a burst of hysterical tears.

The little lady’s nervousness vanished as soon as she saw the agitation of her young guest, and with the soothing tenderness of a mother she led her into her own room, where, with the most unobtrusive kindness, she contrived to win back her calmness. Then she had some patterns to select for hangings for the bedrooms, in which grave matter she consulted Florence, who, pleased to be of service, roused herself to assist in the choice, and write some letters to the tradespeople by whom they were supplied.

With the tact supplied by kindness of heart, Mrs. Wilson quickly comprehended that the way to make Florence contented was to give her employment. Accordingly, as soon as they had breakfasted on the following morning, she led her into the library, and pointed to the bare shelves, and the packing cases that bestrewed the floor.

“My dear, I haven’t a notion how books should be placed, and Mr. Aylwinne sent me word that I had better leave these alone till he came, unless I could find some one competent to arrange and catalogue them. Now, it would be a great relief to my mind if this could be done before his arrival.”

“I shall be delighted to undertake it,” Florence replied, and Mrs. Wilson was satisfied. The owner of Orwell Court had gone to Southampton to await there the coming of the ship in which his wards had sailed from India. His return was not expected for several days, and this interval was one of real rest and refreshment to the governess-elect.

The library at Orwell Court was a fine, old-fashioned room, with deep bay windows looking far away over the greensward and clumps of trees dotting the park to a long range of chalk hills beyond.

Florence—whether at her desk or on the library steps with some engrossing volume on her lap—always contrived to perch herself where she could see the sun set behind these distant hills, and enjoy the beauty of the view.

Mrs. Wilson passed in and out all day long, to detail little vexations, or ask advice on some—to her—very important point. If she found Florence at work, she stayed, but if she had forgotten herself in the pages of Thierry or Macaulay, Mrs. Wilson smiled, and slipped away again in silence.

The days glided on only too quickly, and one chilly evening, as Florence and her friend sat over the fire in the morning room, the sounds of wheels were heard on the carriage drive.

Mrs. Wilson started up; joy at Mr. Aylwinne’s arrival mingling with her nervous dread that he would not find everything in the perfect order and good taste she had been worrying herself and every one about her to attain.

“It’s he—it’s Mr. Aylwinne!” she panted. “I’m so pleased! But, oh, Miss Heriton, do you think he’ll approve of the way we’ve hung the pictures? And there are those statuettes—I’m terribly afraid they’re not placed in the right niches!”

“Mr. Aylwinne must be of a very exacting disposition if he is not satisfied,” Florence answered, her pulses beating more quickly than usual as she anticipated her own introduction. “But will you not go to meet him?”

“Of course—of course!” And Mrs. Wilson hurried away, forgetting in her haste to close the door after her.

It was rather awkward to be thus made a hearer of their meeting; but it was unavoidable, for Florence did not like to cross the room and shut the door, lest they should approach and detect her in the act.

Thus she heard a manly voice exclaim heartily:

“Well, Mrs. Wilson, here I am at last; but I scarcely know yet whether this is Orwell Court or not. How you have transmogrified the place, to be sure!”

“Not for the worse, I hope. I assure you I have tried to remember your wishes and tastes, and act up to them as far as I could.”

“And you have succeeded admirably. Nothing could be better than the effect of the lamplight on that marble group. Why, Mrs. Wilson, your taste is exquisite!”

“Oh, pray don’t give me credit for what I don’t possess! I should not have thought of such a thing. In fact, that group was quite a trouble to me, for I could not find a corner it fitted. It was Miss Heriton who suggested putting it there.”

“Who?” Mr. Aylwinne’s voice took such a startled tone that a shiver ran through the frame of the listening Florence, and involuntarily she retreated still farther from the speakers.

“Miss Heriton—Florence Heriton. Is it not a pretty name? I must tell you”—Mrs. Wilson chattered on, quite in a glow of elation at his praises—“I must tell you that it was a real anxiety to me when you wrote and bade me find a governess for your poor little wards; and so I did as you had advised me to do in any real difficulty: I carried your letter to that excellent Mr. Lumley. But you won’t catch cold standing here, will you, sir? I am so dreadfully thoughtless, and there is a fire in the morning room.”

“I shall not catch cold,” he answered curtly. “You went to Mr. Lumley? Quite right. Well, and then?”

“And then he told me he knew a young lady whom he could recommend; and we went together and secured her. But I’m sure you feel chilly, Mr. Aylwinne; you look so pale about the lips.”

“You secured her services, did you say? And her father—what about him?”

“Dear me, didn’t I tell you?” And Mrs. Wilson lowered her voice to an awed whisper, which, to Florence’s great relief, made it inaudible where she stood. “He’s dead, you know, sir; taken off quite suddenly, Mr. Lumley said, with paralysis. And she was such an excellent daughter! It was very touching to see her sitting there alone, in her deep mourning—so patient, poor dear, and so resigned!”

“And you secured—that is, you engaged her? And she is coming here, to Orwell Court?” Mr. Aylwinne asked unsteadily.

“Dear me—how badly I must express myself!” cried Mrs. Wilson. “I thought you quite understood that she is here.”

“Florence Heriton here, in my house?”

So strangely were these words spoken that the nervous little housekeeper began to get into a state of great perturbation.

“I hope I have not been too hasty in my arrangements, sir. But Mr. Lumley advised, and seemed to think—and I am so unaccustomed to such responsibility—that——”

But Mr. Aylwinne had by this time quite recovered himself, and interrupted her by saying, in his usually firm, decided accents:

“You have done quite right, my good friend. There is a fate in these things which overrules our wisest intentions. Come, you must introduce me to—the governess of my wards.”

Florence, embarrassed by what she had overheard, knew not whether to advance or retain her position when Mr. Aylwinne followed Mrs. Wilson into the room. She had withdrawn to the most distant window, and as she turned at their entrance the deep-crimson draperies behind her threw out her slight figure and delicate profile in vivid relief.

With just the nice degree of empressement the occasion warranted, Mr. Aylwinne held out his hand, and hoped that Miss Heriton would be comfortable at Orwell Court with his worthy friend Mrs. Wilson.

There was not a fault to be found with his words or manner. It was just what a generous employer’s should be to the lady whose services he accepted. But the hand that touched Florence’s was cold and trembling, and her timid glance at his dark face showed her that he never looked up while addressing her.

Mrs. Wilson would have bustled away to order some refreshments; but, putting her into her chair, he rang the bell himself for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; he wanted nothing more, he said.

And then, leaning his elbow on the end of the mantel-piece, he glided into general remarks about the weather, and one or two of the topics of the day, with an easy politeness before which the remaining traces of Florence’s embarrassment disappeared.

He seemed disposed to ignore the fact that this was not their first interview, and for this she was extremely thankful. It enabled her to bear her share in the conversation with greater ease; although she was not sorry when Mrs. Wilson’s anxiety to know whether this room was furnished correctly, or that one arranged as Mr. Aylwinne intended, kept him employed in answering her questions.

Florence, though her fingers were busy with some work, was a keen observer of all that was passing.

She liked to watch Mr. Aylwinne’s demeanor to the fussy little lady. While it was evident enough that these housekeeping matters were boring him, and his thoughts had often flown far away when she came to the end of some description or explanation, yet he was always patient and kind, listening to and commending her as an affectionate son would bear with the infirmities of a mother.

Once, when he lowered his voice in replying to some query she put to him, Florence started, and her work dropped on her lap, for those softly modulated tones, with something plaintive thrilling through their music, went to her own heart.

Surely she had heard them before! But when?

She looked at him scrutinizingly. His forehead and eyes were concealed by the hand that shaded them from the lamp, and the luxuriant beard and mustache, which were quite Oriental in their profusion, effectually concealed the contour of the lower part of his countenance.

Her scrutiny baffled, Florence resumed her work; but again and again the same memories were evoked, though still she vainly taxed her brain for answers to the questions:

“Who is he, and how connected with the far-distant past?”

When she again listened to Mrs. Wilson’s babble, the little lady was speaking of the library.

“You’ve not seen it yet, Mr. Aylwinne; but I’m sure you’ll be delighted. It looks so nice now it’s carpeted, and the easy-chairs in the snuggest nooks; but I’m terribly afraid you’ll think the carpet too dark, and the pattern of the largest.”

“It’s not likely to interfere with my studies, is it?” he asked, with a smile.

“Well, no, I suppose these little things do not catch your eye and fidget you. Did I tell you that we have put all the books in order?”

“I hope not,” said Mr. Aylwinne; then, as he saw her blank glance, he added laughingly: “I mean that I hope you have not been arranging them according to the size and binding instead of the contents.”

“Would it signify?” Mrs. Wilson asked innocently. “I’m no reader myself, but I like to see books put on their shelves uniformly; it makes them look so nice and neat. However, I have left it to Miss Heriton. She will tell you what she has done.”

“I cannot pretend to have made a satisfactory classification of so many volumes,” Florence replied, “but I have arranged them to the best of my judgment.”

“You are very good,” said Mr. Aylwinne, a little stiffly. “I have no doubt they will do very well. Where have you put my ‘Carlo Dolce,’ Mrs. Wilson?”

“Your what, sir?”

“Picture, madam—a small painting of two female heads.”

“Oh, I know now,” said the housekeeper briskly. “It is in the study. That picture, you know, Miss Heriton, that you said reminded you so much of your mother.”

Mr. Aylwinne started from his lounging attitude and walked quickly to the door. As he opened it he seemed to recollect himself, and came back again.

“I beg your pardon, ladies. I had forgotten to say that my wards will be here early to-morrow. They were so fatigued with their voyage that I left them with a motherly landlady at a hotel in Kirton, and promised to fetch them in the morning. Good night!”

“I am afraid he is very tired himself by his going away so abruptly,” said Mrs. Wilson uneasily. “I never saw him look so before. Did you see how white he had turned, Miss Heriton?”

“I was not noticing Mr. Aylwinne’s looks,” Florence answered quietly. “Perhaps it was only his manner.”

“Oh, no; he was always so courteous to every one!” Mrs. Wilson declared. She wondered whether she might venture to send something nice and hot to his dressing room—just a tray with a morsel of fricasseed chicken and some mulled wine.

“How long have you known Mr. Aylwinne?” asked Florence, so abruptly that Mrs. Wilson regarded her with open eyes.

“How long? Ever since he first came to England to take possession of his property. That was before he went to Egypt. He has been the best and truest friend I ever had in my life, Miss Heriton. I cannot think of his goodness without reproaching myself for not doing more to testify my gratitude. I’ll go and send up that tray, I think, if you’ll excuse my running away.”

“Tell me before you go,” said Florence, detaining her, “tell me where Mr. Aylwinne had been residing before he came to England.”

“In India, my dear, of course. I thought you knew that he was there for some years. What wine would you advise me to mull? Port? Or do you think that would be too heavy?”

Putting her off with an evasive answer, Florence escaped to her own chamber.

She was pale, and trembling with irrepressible agitation. At one moment she reproached herself for giving way to ridiculous fancies, and told herself it was absurd to imagine that beneath the bronzed and bearded skin of the wealthy owner of Orwell Court she recognized the smooth-faced Frank Dormer, with whom she parted so many long years ago; yet, reason as she would, the fancy returned. Every strange speech he had made this night was pondered over, only to increase her perplexity, for in the softened tones that had replied to Mrs. Wilson she seemed to detect the echo of that voice last heard in the happy home of her childhood.

CHAPTER XII.

FLORENCE’S PUPILS.

Still doubtful and embarrassed, Florence Heriton descended to the breakfast table on the following morning, resolved, by a closer observation of Mr. Aylwinne, to discover whether she had any reasonable grounds for the fancies that troubled her.

But the gentleman was not visible. Early as it was, he had gone to Kirton to fetch his wards; and Mrs. Wilson was so engrossed in the sundry preparations she thought it necessary to make for the comfort of these children that she kept jumping up and down every minute to give fresh orders, or rescind the last ones.

Florence was glad to get away from her endless appeals, and shut herself up in the library with her own thoughts, painful though they were. The prevailing one was always this: If her suppositions were correct, and she indeed beheld in Mr. Aylwinne the Frank Dormer she had once known, it was very certain that he had no desire to court her recognition. All the romance of her nature was wounded and humiliated by this fact. Those hopes her mother’s diary had cherished must now be forgotten, and she was ready to despise herself for having believed that the thoughts of any one could be constant all these years to the girlish, unformed Florence of the priory.

Her own course, she proudly told herself, was plain enough: neither by word nor look must she ever give him reason to suspect that she guessed his secret, and she would be careful to seize the first plausible pretext for throwing up a situation which she heartily regretted having accepted.

As she sat at a desk, trying to fix her attention on the catalogue she was completing, she heard a little bustle in the hall, and Mrs. Wilson’s voice mingling with more youthful tones.

Her pupils had arrived, but she did not go to meet them till Mr. Aylwinne was heard asking where she was.

Then, half reluctant to encounter him, yet inwardly longing to have her doubts resolved, Florence put down her pen and rose. The next moment the door opened, and Mr. Aylwinne entered, leading with him two little boys.

They were delicate-featured, slim children, with a strange look about their large, dark eyes not easy to define. It was as if they had suffered some great shock, which had so deeply impressed itself on their memories as to leave an abiding and unconquerable terror. Their ages were, perhaps, ten and twelve; but though their limbs were well proportioned, they had not the fearless, healthy look of English lads of the same age; and they clung to the arms of their guardian with almost girlish timidity and dependence.

Florence was not so much impressed at first with the appearance of her pupils as their sex; and she kept her place, not a little vexed at her own want of thought in having neglected to make more particular inquiries concerning them.

“Walter—Fred,” said Mr. Aylwinne, “this is the young lady I have been telling you about. Go and shake hands with her.”

But the lads hesitated to leave his side, and Florence promptly said:

“Pardon me, sir—I cannot undertake the education of boys. I supposed that your wards were little girls.”

“Is it of any consequence so long as they are docile and intelligent?” asked Mr. Aylwinne, lifting his eyebrows.

“Certainly it is, sir,” replied Florence, who began to feel annoyed.

He saw this, and apologized gracefully for his own carelessness in not mentioning their sex before. Then, placing a portfolio of colored views before the silent boys, he came to her side.

“Miss Heriton, you may, and doubtless do, think it strange that I should select a female instructor for these poor children. I will tell you why I have done so. Their father was an English officer, whose duties had fixed his residence at a small station not far from Meerut. It was a dull life for a man of active habits; but his wife—a pretty, gentle woman—shared it; and to make it still less irksome, they had kept their children with them instead of sending them to England for their education. You remember the fearful mutiny that broke out at Meerut? Captain Denison was one of the first victims the brutal sepoys pounced upon, and his wretched wife barely saved herself and these two boys by flight.”

Florence began to look with awakening interest on the delicate lads of whom he spoke.

“Yes,” Mr. Aylwinne went on, “she fled; and braving all other dangers, hid in the jungle. But she was tracked there by the insatiate shedders of blood. When she found that they drew near her hiding place, she commanded her children to be still, whatever might happen; and then, with a mother’s devotion, started up and fled to lead her pursuers away ere they discovered that she was not alone.

“She was seen—followed—hacked limb from limb, with these wretched, powerless children looking on—their faculties so chilled with horror that for days, nay, weeks, they were speechless and almost idiotic. But you are faint. Let me give you a chair.”

He waited till Florence had somewhat recovered the sickening sensation his tale had induced, and then went on:

“An aged Hindu woman found these boys, and, moved with compassion, took them to her hut, and hid them there until the first fury of the mutineers was allayed. Then she contrived to pass them from one to another of her acquaintances till, by a fortunate accident, they fell into my hands. I have done my best with them, but they are still sickly, timid children: their dreams visited by visions of the scene they saw in the jungle, their nerves unstrung by trifles at which most boys of their age would laugh. An attempt to harden them by the companionship of other lads in a large school has failed. Miss Heriton”—and now Mr. Aylwinne’s voice was low and faltering—“you are an orphan yourself; you have known what it is to lose the best and dearest of earthly friends. Can you not pity these still more sadly bereft ones?”

Although unable to hear what their guardian was saying, the boys had closed the portfolio, and sat mutely studying the beautiful face of Florence. She saw this, and, deeply moved by Mr. Aylwinne’s recital, forgot everything else. She went toward them with extended hands, and they nestled to her side with confiding smiles. She was so fair, so gentle, that they could not fear her. And Mr. Aylwinne was satisfied.

“Before I leave you to get better acquainted,” he said, “I ought to mention that Mr. Lumley, who has other pupils, will take these boys of mine for so many hours each day.”

“That resolves my office into a sinecure,” Florence thoughtfully observed.

“Not at all!” he retorted. “Are mathematics and Latin all that they will require to fit them for active life? I would have them grow up not only clever but good men; not boors, whose own selfish requirements are all they have been encouraged to consider; but early taught to exercise forbearance and courtesy and those gentle virtues which can only be acquired in feminine society. No, no,” he added, with unconcealed emotion, “my wards shall never be the homeless creatures that I was in my youth. They shall have some one to come to with their childish troubles—some one to fill, however inadequately, the vacant place of their mother.”

“Mrs. Wilson would do this,” Florence suggested, with a natural shrinking from the grave responsibilities he seemed to be imposing on her. “She is a kind, good woman.”

Mr. Aylwinne smiled.

“She is the best and kindest of women. May I beg you to take especial care that she does not throw them into a fever with her generous attentions?”

Florence looked gravely from one to the other of the lads, who returned her glances fearlessly, and only wanted a little encouragement to talk to her freely. Raising her eyes to Mr. Aylwinne’s, she said:

“Am I old enough and experienced enough to take this charge upon me?”

“Is it such a very onerous one?” he asked, a little impatiently.

“If I read all it involves rightly—yes. I must be more—much more than the mere teacher of a certain number of accomplishments to these orphans.”

“Undoubtedly. I hold accomplishments as secondary to other things. I have already told you so.”

Florence made no reply to this for some few minutes. Wearied with the long strain her powers had undergone during the last few years of her father’s life, she had come to Orwell Court expecting to find repose—to have certain daily duties to fulfill which, when done, her time would be her own, her cares ended; but to fulfill Mr. Aylwinne’s wishes involved much more than this.

It was Mr. Aylwinne’s voice that broke the silence.

“You are afraid that I shall demand too much—more than I have a right to expect. Well, perhaps I do. Perhaps I have explained my views more fully to you than I should have done to another. But while I spoke I was thinking of a generous, tender woman, who would have taken these desolate boys to her heart, and forgotten the gravity of the charge in the deepness of her compassion. Miss Heriton, what would your mother have counseled you to do in this case?”

The question was a startling one, and it was with some difficulty that she steadied her voice to answer it.

“She would have bidden me take up the work that presented itself, whether it was what I should have chosen or not. But——Is this my duty?” she was about to add if he had not interrupted her.

“I knew you would come to this decision; it was not in your nature to do otherwise. And—and I am glad, although—although——”

For a moment his eye rested on the face of Florence with an expression of overpowering regret; and he held out his hand as if he would have taken hers. But the emotion was so transitory that before she had scarcely detected it he had conquered himself, and, with a word to his wards, left the room.

Resolutely subduing her wish to run away, too, and think over what he had been saying, Florence devoted herself to Walter and Fred. Won out of their timidity by her gentle cheerfulness, they soon talked with all the frankness of their age; and as she was careful to avoid any painful subjects, their spirits rose more and more.

It was with increasing respect for Mr. Aylwinne’s disposition that she casually learned that these boys had no claim upon him beyond his compassion, for the only relatives their parents possessed had hesitated to burden themselves with two penniless orphans. Only once did Florence find it necessary to turn the current of their thoughts quickly, and that was when Fred, gulping down a great sob, timidly drew his hand over her glossy hair, saying:

“It was just like mamma’s—dear, dear mamma’s!”

Tears glittered in her own eyes as she kissed the boy; but, starting up, she pointed to a grassy eminence visible from the window, and, declaring there was just time to climb it before lunch, bade them fetch their hats. In high glee, they obeyed, and ere their walk was over Walter’s delight in her companionship broke out in a boyish assurance that everything here was jolly, but she was the jolliest of it all.

Leaving them in the courtyard to make friends with the good-tempered old house dog, Florence went into the room where luncheon was generally spread. She could not resist smiling and remembering Mr. Aylwinne’s warning as she saw the profusion of dainties Mrs. Wilson had prepared to tempt the appetites of her young charges. That lady herself, instead of being, as in general, employed in fussily altering the place of this dish and lamenting over the appearance of another, was standing at a window with a very serious visage.

She turned round, however, when Florence demanded whether they had kept her waiting.

“No, my dear; nor would it have been of any consequence if you had. We will always lunch at whatever hour suits you and the dear children best.”

“And Mr. Aylwinne?” asked Florence, with a little surprise at her apparent forgetfulness of his claims to be considered.

“My dear, he’s gone. That’s what troubles me now, for I am sure he can’t be well.”

“Gone!” Florence could not help repeating, in her astonishment at the unexpected announcement.

“Yes, my dear. He came in here and sat down, with his head on his hands, for ever so long; and I asked him twice if he were ill, but he did not seem to hear me; only after a while he got up, and said that he believed Miss Heriton had consented to take charge of his boys, and he thought we should get on a great deal better without him, and so he should go to Scotland for some shooting. And there was just five minutes to say everything, and then he mounted his horse and rode away; and I don’t believe,” she added, with real vexation, “I don’t believe he has been over the house or seen half of what we have done to it!”

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DISCOVERY.

Christmas had come and gone before Mr. Aylwinne returned to Orwell Court. The change those months had wrought in his wards was almost marvelous. Their frames, like their intellects, had expanded in the bracing air and healthy companionship they had been enjoying; and the shrinking nervousness of the past was scarcely ever discernible now.

Working out her own ideas of what was best for them, Florence had wisely made much of her teaching of the simplest kind. Nothing was ever allowed to interfere with the preparation of their lessons for Mr. Lumley; but when this was done, she walked with them, played croquet, and entered into their sports and plans with a heartiness that infused additional spirit into them. For a long time they could not conquer their dread of the daily visit to the vicarage and the sly taunts leveled at them by lads of their own age whose acquirements were far beyond their own. But Florence walked to Mr. Lumley’s with them, often awaited their return, and had so much sympathy for their troubles mingled with such brave, hopeful auguries for their future, that Walter grew too manly to fret over little difficulties, and Fred had too much boyish pride not to imitate him.

The winter had set in with some severity, and the delicate East Indians had been disposed at first to cower over the fires, and permit Mrs. Wilson to cosset them to her heart’s content. But, incited by Florence’s example, they were gradually induced to try the hardening system; and a few merry games at snowballing, a few afternoons on the ice of the pretty lake in the park, made them pronounce an English winter delightful. Florence herself grew rosier and stronger than she had been for years now that she shared in these outdoor amusements, and the trio were all panting and glowing with pleasurable excitement when they came into the house at the close of a January day to find Mr. Aylwinne standing on the hearthrug in the dining room, talking to Mrs. Wilson.

He bowed rather stiffly to Florence, and held out a hand to each of her pupils.

“Well, boys, this is something like! Where have you been to get such apple faces?”

“Skating, sir,” they answered, both together. “Can you skate, Mr. Aylwinne? It is such jolly fun! We’ve been at it these two hours.”

“And what did you do with Miss Heriton the while? Let her stand shivering on the bank to watch your performances?”

“I should rather think not!” cried Walter, looking very indignant. “She skated with us, or else we pushed her in the sleigh the gardener helped us make.”

Mr. Aylwinne gave an approving nod, and Florence went away to take off her wrappings. When she came back, the boys were still talking, for they had much to tell about what they had done and learned since he had been away.

“But you’ll not leave Orwell Court again, will you?” she heard Fred inquire.

“I think not. I am tired of being a wanderer, my boy.”

“It’s very comfortable here,” said Walter, surveying the bright fire with a meditative air.

“You think so because Mrs. Wilson pampers your appetites, and spoils you,” his guardian retorted, amused at the boy’s earnestness.

Walter reddened.

“No, it’s not that, I’m sure; for I don’t think half so much of her cakes and pies as Fred does. It’s because—because——Well, I don’t hardly know why, except”—and, catching sight of Florence, who had just come, he slid his fingers into hers—“except it’s because you are here, Donna.”

His guardian frowned.

“Does Miss Heriton permit you to call her by a stupid nickname?”

Walter was silent, but Fred ventured to stand up for his pet appellation.

“I don’t think it’s a stupid one, Mr. Aylwinne. It means a lady, and I’m sure Miss Heriton’s one.”

“The more reason, my boy, why you should call her by her own name.”

“But it sounds so long and stiff, and we like the other best,” pouted Fred. “And she don’t mind it a bit, for she says so.”

“Before such very conclusive arguments my own opinion must give way,” retorted his guardian dryly. “But take care that you never for a moment forget the respect due to Miss Heriton, unless you would incur my serious displeasure.”

The sternness with which this speech was concluded awed the sensitive boys; and nothing was said until Fred seized an opportunity of whispering in Florence’s ear:

“You do not think us rude, do you?”

“Certainly not! I am sure you love me too well to treat me discourteously.”

“But how crossly he spoke!”

“Hush, dear boy!” said Florence, who saw by the glance of that gentleman’s penetrating eye that he overheard what was passing. “Mr. Aylwinne is tired to-night. To-morrow he will understand you better.”

But the morrow did not bring with it the anticipated change in his manner, and Mrs. Wilson was the only one who was at her ease with him. Perhaps he thought that Walter and Fred would be none the worse for standing in some fear of his anger; anyhow, he was distant to their governess, and sufficiently stern to her pupils to make them careful of offending him. From his favorite corner in the drawing-room, where he sat every evening with his papers and books, an imperative reminder would issue if ever the boys showed any disposition to resist Florence’s mild rule; and although he rarely addressed her after the courtesies of the morning had been exchanged, she knew that his eye often followed her movements, and that he watched her closely and continually.

It might be in the interest of her young charges that he did this. Certainly, his demeanor betokened no recollection of an earlier acquaintance—no kindly feelings such as pleasant memories of the past evoke; and yet Florence’s conviction that in her wealthy employer she beheld Frank Dormer gained ground instead of decreasing.

Though careful to conceal this, she often caught herself listening to his voice, furtively scanning his features, and recalling everything he had said that tended to strengthen her supposition. Many an idle hour was spent in conjecturing what could have changed the gentle, affectionate Frank into the cold, reserved man who seemed often inclined to ignore her very existence.

Yet, as time went on, traces of a different feeling peeped out. When she heard with regret and alarm that her Aunt Margaret, traveling across the Apennines, had been attacked by brigands, Mr. Aylwinne, unasked, made inquiries for her concerning the report, nor rested until he had ascertained that it was exaggerated, and Mrs. Blunden safely on her way to Paris.

The books she preferred always found their way to her table; the boys would be warned to avoid walks which would prove too wet or long for their gentle companion, and the only time that Mrs. Wilson fell under Mr. Aylwinne’s displeasure was when he detected her feeding the sweet-toothed Fred with some dainty Florence had forbidden.

Still he was outwardly so careful to keep the same impassable distance between them that Florence began to chafe at it and ask herself if her changed fortunes occasioned it—if his accession to great wealth had hardened the heart once so tender and true.

With a haughty gesture, she told herself that she would brave his selfish coldness, and let him see that, though she had lost all else, her pride steeled her against aught he could do or say.

From this time she imitated his reserve. If he was cold, she was still colder; if he relaxed sufficiently to propose anything for her pleasure, she was either deaf to the suggestion, or with curt thanks refused to avail herself of it. She rigidly adhered to her duties as governess to his wards, and with proud humility accepted the stipulated payment for her services; but when Walter and Fred, in a little speech taught them for the occasion, begged her acceptance of a desk far too elegant to have been purchased with their pocket money, the gift was steadily refused. Mr. Aylwinne was piqued, though he said nothing, and for some days looked more somber than ever.

It was soon after this that Walter, who progressed admirably under Mr. Lumley’s tuition, began Euclid, and was dreadfully puzzled with the dry problems, which his young head refused to retain. Pitying the boy, who was really anxious to master his work, Florence nightly went over it with him, and together they succeeded in conquering many of the early difficulties he encountered. But one evening, after long study, they were both nonplused, and Walter fell from vexation into despair. Laying his head on the book, he began to sob:

“I shall never, never understand it! It’s horrible stuff! You see, you can’t make anything of it, Donna, and the boys will all laugh at me, and Mr. Lumley will be so cross!”

Mrs. Wilson put down her knitting and spectacles with a pitying “Dear me!” and trotted away to the storeroom for some almonds and raisins to console the weeper, but Fred exclaimed:

“What, blubbering! Oh, Wal, you are a big baby!” and then subsided again into the agreeable study of “Robinson Crusoe.”

The angry Walter aimed a blow at him, which he ducked and evaded; and Florence glanced uncertainly in the direction of Mr. Aylwinne, half inclined to bid the boy ask his assistance.

She met his eye gazing fully at her, and ere she could speak he queried:

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

Instead of replying, she turned to Walter.

“Go to Mr. Aylwinne—he will explain what it is that puzzles you so much.”

The boy started up joyfully, but his guardian’s next words checked his approach.

“I did not say so. I think the weakness of character that sits down and laments over a difficulty, instead of trying to overcome it, deserves no encouragement. But if Miss Heriton asks this as a favor to herself I will do it.”

This Florence would not do. Drawing the book toward her, she began to study it more determinately than ever.

Mr. Aylwinne watched her in silence for a few minutes, and then said:

“Will you accept nothing at my hands, Miss Heriton?”

“It is Walter, sir, who needs your help—not I.”

“So be it, then,” he said, with a half sigh. “I had no business to be so overofficious. Come here, youngster!”

With alacrity, Walter obeyed, and put the book into his guardian’s hand.

“Blockhead that you are!” was the comment. “Do you not see this, and this? Give me a piece of paper—now a pencil; no, I have one here in my pocket.”

Despite his grumbling at the boy’s stupidity, he patiently went over the proposition till the rejoiced lad had thoroughly mastered it.

“Now take yourself off to bed!” said Mr. Aylwinne, as he returned the book. “No, don’t thank me; I only came to your aid because I saw that you were boring Miss Heriton most unmercifully. She is too good-natured to you.”

“Oh, no, she isn’t!” cried Fred, running up to give her his good-night kiss before he followed his brother from the room.

“Seriously,” said Mr. Aylwinne, as Florence was putting books and papers together preparatory to following her pupils, “seriously, I never contemplated your taking so much unnecessary trouble with these boys, and I beg that you will not do it any more.”

“Their love amply repays me for it,” she replied.

“Ha!” he said gloomily. “Can you still build upon anything so delusive? Is it not a folly that always ends in disappointment?”

Florence did not answer. In taking the pencil from his pocket, Mr. Aylwinne had dropped something, and now a restless movement of his foot pushed it toward her.

She stooped for it, and, as she raised herself, saw with indescribable feelings that it was a tiny ivory cardcase, her mother’s gift to Frank Dormer before he quitted Heriton Priory.

CHAPTER XIV.

TOO LATE!

Without a word Florence held the cardcase toward its owner. As he took it from her hand he raised it reverently to his lips with apparent unconsciousness of the wounded pride that she was silently struggling to subdue.

“You remember this?” he said. “And the night on which it was given to me?”

“Why do you speak of it?” Florence retorted, after a pause. “It is among the things of the past.”

“True!” he answered mournfully. “And she whose gentle hands bestowed the gift little dreamed of the changed times those she left have seen.”

Florence winced. There was something cruel in this remark, coming as it did from one who had been the first to alter.

“Are the times changed more than the faces of those who then called themselves our friends?” she cried, with bitterness.

For a moment Mr. Aylwinne was silent; then, with gentle earnestness, he said:

“Forget those who have been so false to their best feelings, Miss Heriton, and remember only that there are some who would still claim that title if you would permit it.”

For a moment her reproachful eyes were raised to his.

“Where?”

He looked hurt.

“What have I done that you should utter this reproach to me? Why have you so persistently avoided every little kindness I have attempted to show you? Florence—Miss Heriton—for your dear mother’s sake let me redeem the promise I made when I bade her farewell. Let me be the friend, or, if need be, the protector, of her orphan child.”

“The promises made by our guest, Mr. Dormer, are not supposed to be binding on Mr. Aylwinne,” answered Florence haughtily. “Since when has he thought proper to remember them?”

“Always. Never has a word spoken in that last interview with Mrs. Heriton left my memory, although the hopes she permitted me to cherish you have destroyed.”

Astonished and confounded, Florence looked at him inquiringly. What did he—what could he mean? He did not seem in any haste to explain himself, and with increasing stateliness she said:

“Pardon me, sir, if I remind you that such retrospection is as painful as unpleasant. And rest assured I should never have provoked it by coming to Orwell Court had I known whom I should recognize in its owner.”

Bowing slightly, she moved toward the door; but ere she reached it Mr. Aylwinne, in great agitation, placed himself before her.

“Miss Heriton, what am I to understand by this? Is it—can it be possible that you did not know me?”

There was such intense earnestness in his manner that Florence faltered something about the lapse of time and the change in his appearance, and yet more in his name.

“Yes, yes—I am aware of all this. But Mr. Heriton knew that I had assumed my uncle’s name. I wrote to him both before and after leaving India.”

“I did not see those letters,” said Florence, with some reluctance.

“You did not?” he cried excitedly. “But they contained others for you. Surely—surely Mr. Heriton did not withhold those!”

Florence could not speak a word that reproached her father’s memory, but her silence was sufficient reply.

Mr. Aylwinne struck his hands together and paced the room in great disorder.

“It was cruel—it was dishonorable! Yes, it was dishonorable! How dared he use me so?”

“Hush, sir! You are speaking of my father!” said Florence, whose hand was now on the door, though she felt unwilling to leave him without further explanation.

“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, leading her gently back to the fireplace. “Forgive me! I know I am scarcely justified in saying this before you; but now that I know so much I must be fully satisfied. Were you aware that Mr. Heriton answered my last letter?”

Florence murmured a negative, and then looked at him eagerly.

“Answered it in his name and yours—answered it as though it was your wish that guided his pen.”

While her eyes fell consciously beneath the steady gaze of his, he went on:

“You did not know this. I see it all now, now that it is too late—too late! Florence, as soon as a brightening fortune warranted the act, I asked Mr. Heriton for your hand. I received a curt and decided refusal. The words are still engraven on my memory. ‘Miss Heriton regretted that Mr. Dormer should have imagined her so foolishly romantic as to remember anything connected with Mr. Dormer’s visit to Heriton Priory, except that she did her best to amuse her father’s guest.’ And the letter concluded with a definite assurance that Miss Heriton’s hand was already disposed of.”

A sigh of shame and distress burst from Florence’s lips as he ceased. She well remembered that at the time of which Mr. Aylwinne spoke, her father’s expectations had been raised to a pitch of the highest extravagance by the fair-seeming speculation he had embarked in; and a few flattering speeches whispered in her ears by a needy nobleman who had lent his name to the scheme had inspired Mr. Heriton with a belief that he should soon see his daughter a peeress.

For such wild and unfounded hopes as these he had sacrificed her happiness—and not hers only, but another’s. For a moment the conflict in her mind between filial love and her sense of having been cruelly wronged was severe. But the better feeling soon predominated, and she murmured:

“Forgive him—forgive him! He was unhappy in his advisers, and his impatience to retrieve his position led him to do many things his better judgment condemned.”

Mr. Aylwinne made no immediate reply to this appeal. He could not judge Mr. Heriton’s conduct as leniently as his daughter was doing. At last he said hoarsely:

“We are taught to believe that our greatest sorrows and disappointments tend to some good purpose. But knowing what I know, and remembering from what a depth of trouble and humiliation I might have been able to save you, Florence, it is difficult to think so.”

She turned from him with burning cheek.

“Forgive me,” he went on, “if I have pained you. I will never recur to this subject again. Perhaps it would have been better if I had never learned the truth—if I had always believed that it was your own will that separated us. But, Florence, though I may never ask more—though there is a barrier between us I may not attempt to remove—you will give me your friendship, will you not? You will let me have the satisfaction of knowing that you have found a safe shelter beneath my roof? That, as far as Fate has left it in my power, I have fulfilled my pledge to the gentle woman so dear to both of us?”

Before she could reply, Mrs. Wilson, who had been detained by some petitioner from the village, came hurrying in to know Mr. Aylwinne’s wishes about the relief she proposed sending. Florence thankfully availed herself of the opportunity thus afforded her of quitting the room. Her brain was in a whirl that effectually banished sleep from her pillow for the greater part of the night.

Frank Dormer had been true to her! Oh, joyful thought! He had returned to make her his, as her beloved mother had fondly expected that he would. And then her head dropped on her hands, and she wept bitterly, to think that for the mere love of wealth and rank her father had separated them. A yet deeper grief lay at the root of Florence’s tears. She had heard with a thrill of pain Mr. Aylwinne’s voice passionately declare that the discovery had been made too late! He had asked for her friendship—he had hinted at a barrier that totally precluded his asking more; and this it was that made her heart sink more than all she had hitherto undergone. She had learned that his youthful fancy had strengthened and ripened beneath the hot suns of India—that he had hastened home in all the flush of joy to claim her; the letters she had thought it so hard not to be permitted to read had been full of devotion to her whose only earthly hope had been that such an hour would come; and now that at last she knew this, and saw him worthy in all points of her affection, his own lips had declared that it was too late! Their love must be forgotten, and they must be content to be friends.

Florence rebelled against this conclusion. Young, warm-hearted, and free, she felt that she could have loved him devotedly. What, she asked herself, could it be that intervened to keep them apart? Could it be that Frank, in his vexation at Mr. Heriton’s refusal, had betrothed himself to another?

In vague conjectures like this, the hours passed away, until, thoroughly exhausted, she threw herself on the bed in her clothes, and sank into a heavy sleep.

It was Mrs. Wilson who awakened her, and Florence started up in affright to find the sun high in the heavens, and the usual hour for breakfast long over.

“I’ve been in before,” Mrs. Wilson explained, “for it’s such an unusual thing for you to sleep late that I felt sure you were not well. And when I saw how pale you looked, I could not bear to wake you till there was some fresh tea made. Do sit up and drink it, my dear! Not undressed, too! How very ill you must have felt! Why did you not call me?”

In silence, Florence swallowed the contents of the cup so kindly held to her lips, and then got rid of Mrs. Wilson with the assurance that she felt much better, and only wanted a bath to be quite herself again.

When alone, she tried to decide upon the best course of action she could adopt. Not all Mr. Aylwinne’s generosity could reconcile her to remaining beneath his roof while unable to regard him with indifference. At the same time, she felt that she owed it to him to receive his kindness with gratitude, and neither withdraw herself rudely nor hastily, lest he suspect the true reason.

“I will write to my Aunt Margaret,” she decided. “She is the only relative I possess, and I have a just claim upon her protection. With all her faults she is affectionate, and will not refuse me a home.”

She opened her desk directly, and had just commenced her epistle, when Mrs. Wilson tapped at the door.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my dear, but here is a note Mr. Aylwinne asked me to give you. He has been waiting for more than an hour to see you, but could not stay longer.”

“Has he left Orwell Court again?” asked Florence, with a dismayed conviction that if it were so he went to avoid her.

“Yes, my dear. Business in the north has called him away. Very unfortunate, isn’t it, just as he was so comfortable with us? However, I’ll not keep you from reading your note.”

But it laid before her unopened long after Mrs. Wilson quitted the room. With eyes fixed on the bold superscription, she sat, as if unable to nerve herself to learn what lay beneath. At last she seized and tore it open.

“I cannot leave home,” it ran, “without expressing my fears that, by my selfish recurrence to the past, I have wounded not only your feelings, but your delicacy. I ought to have preserved a rigid silence upon what has happened; but I believed till last night that you knew me, and that, even though shrinking from an open recognition, you felt that beneath my roof there was a refuge from all such earthly troubles as a faithful friend’s care can avert. If it were not so then, let it be so now. Try to forget anything I may have said with reference to my own feelings, and look upon me as what I earnestly wish to be to you—a brother in whose hands you may fearlessly trust your future.

“I may not return to Orwell Court for months—perhaps not for a year or two. But a letter directed to my bankers will always find me, if you should require advice or assistance from

“Yours most faithfully,

“FRANK DORMER AYLWINNE.”

Florence dashed away a tear as she folded this letter and put it away in her desk, but her cheek was crimson with resentment.

“He is too careful to make me comprehend that the old affection has entirely died out. He means to stay away until I have accustomed myself to this; perhaps till I have reconciled myself to seeing a fairer and wealthier bride brought here to fill the place that should have been mine. But he shall never know how much this costs me. I will go to Aunt Margaret as soon as she consents to receive me, and see him no more.”

CHAPTER XV.

THE STORM.

When Florence’s letter to Mrs. Blunden had been written and dispatched, she felt calmer, and was able to go through her daily duties with an appearance of cheerfulness. No one guessed the soreness at her heart when the boys spoke of their absent guardian, or Mrs. Wilson lamented his erratic habits, concluding with: “It’s such a pity he doesn’t marry, isn’t it? So fond of children as he is, and so generous and gentle with all women, he would make an excellent husband, wouldn’t he?”

“Perhaps Mr. Aylwinne is already engaged,” Florence suggested, with her head bent over her work.

Mrs. Wilson meditated.

“Well, it may be so, my dear, for I remember when he first came to England that he used to ride out sometimes with a Major Dawson and his daughters. Pretty young creatures they were! Too young then for anything of the kind, but they must be growing quite fine women now.”

After hearing such remarks as these, Florence would grow eager for her aunt’s reply; and she certainly had some cause for her impatience in the length of time she had to wait before it arrived. Mrs. Blunden was in Paris, and apologized for her silence by saying that she had been greatly worried by the loss of her jewel box and the subsequent arrest of the thief.

“I could not settle down to anything,” she said, “until this matter was over, for between my dread of an innocent person being falsely accused and unwillingness to let the guilty one escape unpunished, my mind has been greatly excited. I’m very angry with you, Florence; it’s my duty to be so, for though I freely forgive you for the wicked falsehoods you wrote to me about your poor uncle’s legacy, I cannot pardon the folly that has made you penniless and a dependent. As to coming to me, it is what you ought to have done directly upon the decease of my poor, foolish brother. But as I am in dear and uncomfortable lodgings, and fully resolved to leave this nasty, frivolous city as soon as the weather permits of the journey, why, don’t come. You are in good hands, and can stay quietly at Orwell Court until I join you there. You don’t seem to be aware that I know Mr. Aylwinne. I met him in Italy when I was on my way to Nice, and fairly harassed to death with the extortions of the innkeepers. I had provided myself with a tariff of the charges made at a respectable London hotel, and I was as firmly resolved to abide by this as the horrid, chattering Italians were to cheat me. After I had explained myself to Mr. Aylwinne, I had no more trouble, as he paid the bills for me. They could not take the same advantage of a resolute man as they had been attempting with an unprotected female. How did you make Mr. Aylwinne’s acquaintance? I found that he knew your father, but he so evidently avoided speaking of him that I was obliged to conclude he had lost money through some of my brother’s mad speculations. Is it so? And to what amount? And why do you thank me for sending you a hundred pounds while your father was ill at Brompton? I did not send it. No one had the grace to write and acquaint me with his illness. I shall come to England as soon as I can; so au revoir,” etc.

There was nothing for it, then, but to await Mrs. Blunden’s arrival. Ardently Florence hoped that it might take place before Mr. Aylwinne came back, and already she had mentally written that note of thanks which would tell him that she had quitted his roof. She would not think of the real sorrow it would cost her to do this, nor of the blank her life would be when the loving faces of her young pupils no longer met hers, and she could nevermore linger stealthily in the corner where stood their guardian’s favorite chair, and draw her fingers with tender touch over the books he had last read, or the paper knife he used, or sit in the twilight dreamily fancying that his earnest eyes were following her movements, as she had so often detected them in doing when he thought himself unobserved.

Meanwhile time fleeted on. The spring was merging into summer, and she was often glad to forget herself in long walks to the many lovely spots in the neighborhood. In these her pupils were generally her companions, and they had been urging her for some time to indulge them with a trip to an isolated hill some three or four miles distant, celebrated for the beauty of the views to be obtained from its summit.

Mrs. Wilson made many objections on the score of the length of the walk, the fatigue they would undergo in climbing so steep an eminence, and the danger of rain, or of encountering tramps or gypsies. But the eager Walter overruled them all; and on a brilliantly sunny morning the trio started, accompanied by a lad in Mr. Aylwinne’s service, who was a favorite with both the boys, and who carried a good-sized basket of edibles.

Avoiding the dusty highroad, they permitted Tom, to whom every part of the country was familiar, to guide them across fields, through copses, and over strips of moorland until they reached the foot of Insley Hill. Here the ground was so thickly covered with bluebells and orchids that it was not until huge bunches had been gathered that the delighted boys could be prevailed upon to commence the ascent. It proved more difficult than Florence had anticipated, for there was no actual path to be found, and it was one continued and steep climb, till, hot and breathless, they threw themselves on the dry moss beneath the fir trees that crowned the flat top of the hill.

But the glorious prospects amply repaid their toil; and the sweet odor emitted by the resinous trees, the freshness of the air, and the soft murmur of the breeze that soughed through the treetops, were all delicious. Their luncheon, washed down as it was by the water from a spring in the hillside, was discussed with a relish; and then Tom was sent back to Orwell Court with the empty basket, to carry Mrs. Wilson the tidings of their safe arrival at their destination, and a renewal of their promise to be home before evening set in.

When they had rambled round the top of the hill, and Florence had sketched one of the prettiest points of view, a favorite book was brought out, and the boys seated themselves at her feet to listen while she read aloud.

They had perched themselves on a part of the hill that jutted out, commanding an uninterrupted prospect of the highroad, which wound round the foot immediately beneath them; and it was at first an amusement to Fred to note how small the few figures looked which had passed along it.

By and by the little fellows’ heads drooped heavily on Florence’s knee; but, absorbed in the book, she noticed nothing unusual, till Walter said in her ear:

“Donna, there’s a storm coming up; I can feel it on the air.”

“So can I,” added Fred plaintively. “My poor head is aching so badly I don’t know what to do.”

Florence looked anxiously around. She knew that Walter, with boyish enthusiasm, liked to watch the warring elements, but she had heard Fred pathetically describe his sufferings during the tempests he had witnessed in India. The child’s nervous temperament, always delicate, was severely affected by the change in the weather; and when she tried to arouse him that they might seek a shelter ere the storm overtook them, he sank on the ground, moaning with the acute pain in his temples.

There was not a cottage near, and for a few minutes she knelt beside her helpless charge in great perplexity.

“Let me run to the Court and ask Mrs. Wilson to send the pony chaise for you and Fred,” suggested his braver brother.

Florence glanced at the threatening sky above them.

“My dear boy, it is such a distance to let you go alone.”

“Nonsense, Donna! I don’t mind it a bit. It’s no use to stay here, for it will be hours before Fred is better.”

This seemed too feasible to be denied.

“I’ll run all the way,” Walter added eagerly. “And old John will soon rattle the chaise here, with plenty of cloaks and umbrellas.”

Reluctantly Florence consented to let him go. But no sooner had she given a faint consent than, delighted to prove his courage by the undertaking, Walter bounded down the hill. He stopped a moment at the foot to wave his cap, then vaulted over the stile, and she saw him run swiftly toward the field path by which they came, just as a deafening clap of thunder was followed by a few large drops of rain.

Afraid to take refuge beneath the trees at the summit, and incapable of effecting Fred’s removal to the foot, Florence laid him beneath the projecting bank which had formed their seat, and tried to revive him by bathing his forehead with the cool water from the spring. But ere long all her efforts had to be centered in sheltering him from a pelting shower that came down fast and furiously. By wrapping her own mantle around the child she succeeded in keeping him tolerably safe; but her own dress of some thin material was soon drenched, and she began to reckon the moments since Walter’s departure, and long impatiently for the appearance of the chaise.

As she stood up to gaze along the silent highway, a gentleman, riding in the opposite direction, came in sight, and his eye was caught by her figure. It was something so entirely out of the common way to see a lady in this solitary spot, especially with a storm raging around her, that he checked his steed and looked again. This minuter survey of the graceful form on the heights ended in his dismounting, securing his reins to a sapling, and commencing the ascent of the hill.

Florence neither saw nor heard his approach. She had been too much absorbed in her own chilly condition and the plaints of Fred; and, returning to the boy, she was kneeling by his side, trying to soothe the terrors which made him cry and tremble every time the hoarse muttering of the thunder was audible.

The first thing that made her aware that they were no longer alone was the snapping of some branches beneath a heavy foot. The next moment the bushes were parted, and Mr. Aylwinne appeared.

Too much astonished to speak, she rose and stood before him like a beautiful statue of silence—her parted lips, her varying color, alone betraying the pleasure she could not help feeling at his coming.

But when he drew nearer and began to ask with solicitude the reason he found her here, she remembered herself, and, withdrawing the hand he had taken, gave a curt explanation.

He bent compassionately over Fred, and then eyed her more steadfastly than before.

“But your dress is wet, your shoulders quite unprotected! How long do you say Walter has started? You must let me put my coat around you.”

But this Florence would not permit, and made light of the fears he expressed.

“I shall catch a cold, perhaps, but it is unavoidable; or, rather, I have nothing to blame for it but my own folly in not watching the weather more carefully.”

Mr. Aylwinne’s uneasiness on her account was not appeased by this careless speech; and Florence, whom it alternately vexed and flattered, was thankful when the pony carriage came in sight.

Wrapping Fred in the coat she had refused, Mr. Aylwinne raised the boy in his arms to carry him down the hill, and Florence prepared to follow; but after taking two or three steps he looked back, and warned her not to attempt it.

“The rain has made the dry, short moss as slippery as glass,” he said. “And it will be impossible for you to keep your feet without assistance. Pray stay where you are until I can return.”

She obeyed so far as to stand still until he had passed out of sight, but her pride revolting against the idea of accepting his aid, or of leaning on his arm, she resolved to essay the descent without it.

Mr. Aylwinne had in no wise exaggerated the difficulty. Florence’s thin boots, with their flat soles, afforded no resistance to the glassy earth. She was fain to snatch desperately at the trees to save herself from being thrown down; and at last, in one long glissade, she was impelled forward until she was on the very brink of a sand pit, and only saved from being hurried into it by the projecting roots of an old ash tree, which she succeeded in grasping.

Frightened at the danger so narrowly escaped, and conscious that she must have wandered from the direct route, she tried to return to the spot where Mr. Aylwinne had left her. With difficulty she raised herself to her feet, for the fury of the lightning, and the beating of the rain in her face, dizzied her. Catching at the tufts of heather and the brushwood for support, she had nearly succeeded in returning to the path, when a flash, more vivid than any of the previous ones, lit up the murky air. A venerable tree, struck by the electric fluid, wavered and fell so immediately in the direction she was pursuing, that, shrieking and cowering down, she hid her face. Those mighty branches threatened to crush her beneath them, but she had no power to avert her doom. She knew that a fearful death was at hand, but time and strength to escape seemed alike to have left her. With a mighty crash the old tree measured its length upon the earth, that trembled beneath the shock; but Florence felt herself snatched from her dangerous position, and knew that she was safe and in the arms of Mr. Aylwinne.

CHAPTER XVI.

A MAN OF MYSTERY.

For some few moments the awed Florence could not collect her senses sufficiently to know more than that she was saved. When she began to recover herself a little, Mr. Aylwinne was hurrying her down the hill; nor did he pause until they stood beside the carriage in which Fred was already comfortably laid.

“Miss Heriton must not ride home—she is too wet to run the risk,” said Mr. Aylwinne authoritatively. “Take my horse with you, John, and I will walk with her across the fields.”

Without giving her time to raise any objection, he led her away, and the exceeding gravity of his face kept Florence mute and embarrassed, until he paused a moment to inquire if he was walking too fast.

“I owe you my life,” she faltered. “This is the second time you have saved me from a fearful death. How can I thank you?”

“Hush!” he replied, his lip quivering a little. “Never speak of it again! Only let me treasure among my few pleasant recollections the remembrance that I have been able to be of use to you.”

“You must also let me be grateful,” said Florence, chilled by something in his speech. “My life is of little worth to any one but myself, yet I shudder at the thoughts of losing it so fearfully and suddenly.”

Mr. Aylwinne walked on a few paces without speaking; then, bending toward her, he said softly:

“Poor little Florence! Has the past left such a dark cloud that you cannot shake it off? I hoped in the peaceful seclusion of Orwell Court, where every one who knows you loves you, your natural cheerfulness would return.”

She did not reply. She could not tell him that it was the inexplicable barrier between them which robbed her life of its sunshine.

“You must have a change,” Mr. Aylwinne went on. “You shall go to the seaside for a few weeks or longer. The boys will like it, and I shall give you all carte blanche to enjoy yourselves. Let it be a long holiday, and lessons set entirely aside till you all feel disposed to resume them. Mrs. Wilson shall go, too. I shall leave you to decide for yourselves where it shall be. Choose which part of the coast you prefer, and I will see about a house there directly.”

“I have no doubt that Walter and Fred will be delighted with your proposal,” Florence coldly answered. “And Mrs. Wilson has not been well lately, so that the change will be acceptable to her also. But for myself——”

She paused a moment, for Mr. Aylwinne was looking at her so earnestly that in spite of herself her voice faltered.

“Why do you stop?” he demanded.

“Because your kindness makes me regret to do anything that interferes with your plans. But I have merely been waiting for such an opportunity as this, to tell you that I shall not be able to retain my office much longer.”

“If you say this because I have returned home sooner than I said I should,” Mr. Aylwinne exclaimed, “pray understand at once that I am simply here for a few hours, because my presence was necessary for the signing of some leases.”

“If my residence at Orwell Court involves its owner’s absence,” retorted Florence, rather resentfully, “I have an additional motive for quitting it. But my movements actually depend on my Aunt Margaret, with whom I am to take up my abode immediately on her return to England.”

Again Mr. Aylwinne walked on in silence, until he abruptly put the query:

“From whom did this proposal emanate? From Mrs. Blunden herself?”

Florence would have preferred evading this question, but as he was waiting for a reply, she said truthfully:

“From myself. As she is my nearest relative, I consider that I have a claim upon Aunt Margaret’s protection; and this she has cheerfully conceded.”

He sighed.

“Perhaps you have acted wisely—yes, I must acknowledge that you are right. And yet I hoped you would have been contented to remain with us.”

Florence did not reply, and the conversation was not resumed until they were within sight of the house. Then, as he held her for a moment in his arms while lifting her over an awkward stile, he said tenderly:

“Florence, if you have any perception of what is passing in my heart, you must know how keenly I shall feel your loss—how sharp a pang it inflicts to know that I cannot say: ‘Stay with me forever—be the dear companion of my life!’”

Trembling from head to foot, she turned from him, and leaned against the stile, too much agitated to sustain herself.

He saw this, and began to reproach himself as the cause.

“I am an unmanly, selfish wretch! I cannot justify my conduct—nothing can excuse it! Yet forgive me, Miss Heriton—pray forgive me!”

Instead of answering, she began to hurry on. What could she say that would not in some measure betray the bitter pain she suffered whenever he made these mysterious allusions?

But he followed her closely.

“Miss Heriton, you are greatly fatigued—pray take my arm, and I promise on my honor not to offend you again. You will not? Florence, had I felt less deeply, I could have better borne the disappointment of my best hopes.”

Florence let him draw her hand through his arm. Oh, if he would but explain himself more fully—if he would but tell her frankly what this barrier was whose existence he so deplored! He loved her! Yes, she could not doubt that, veil it as he might under the colder name of friendship. What was it that made a confession of his love sinful or impossible?

But apparently satisfied with this mute token of her forgiveness, he silently led her to the house. At the door was Mrs. Wilson, who had been watching for their arrival.

She held up her hands in dismay as she saw Florence’s white face and dripping garments, and began to exclaim: “Dear me! How dreadful! My poor, dear child, this will give you your death!”

“Not if proper precautions are promptly taken,” said Mr. Aylwinne significantly; and his kind-hearted housekeeper acted on the hint with such dispatch that the weary girl was soon undressed and laid in a warm bed, with directions to have a long, comfortable sleep and not make herself uneasy about Fred, who was getting better already.

Exhausted both in mind and body by the flood of hysterical tears she shed as soon as she was alone, she tried to obey the injunction, and was sinking into a fitful doze when her door was softly opened.

Imagining that it was only Mrs. Wilson coming in to inquire how she felt, and in no humor to be talked to, Florence lay perfectly still, with closed eyes, while the intruder came on tiptoe to the bedside and leaned over her.

As the curtain was again dropped, she heard Mrs. Wilson say, in cautious, lowered tones:

“I told you she must be sleeping.”

“I know,” said a fuller and louder voice. “But I could not resist coming at once to look at her. Dear child, she is the image of her sweet, gentle mother!”

Florence started up in bed, and threw back the drapery. Her ear had not deceived her, and she was warmly clasped to the capacious bosom of her hot-tempered but affectionate Aunt Margaret.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH.

Mrs. Blunden, ill skilled in analyzing the feelings of those about her, never suspected the mingled ones that prompted the sobs Florence could not repress. She attributed them entirely to the recollections naturally arising on this their first meeting since Mr. Heriton’s death. In the same breath she reproached her niece as having by her deceitful conduct occasioned their estrangement, and called herself hard-hearted for not having sooner forgiven her.

“You were a very naughty girl, Florence. I must call you so. I’ll never say one thing and mean another. The word of the Heritons has always been their bond; and nothing can excuse you for breaking yours. But I ought to have considered the circumstances in which you were placed. I’m afraid I’ve been dreadfully unfeeling. Pray don’t fret any more—I can’t bear it! And I’ve come to you with the kindest intentions. You shall take my name, and I’ll introduce you into society, and take care that you marry well. You shall never again know what trouble or anxiety means, my dear.”

Florence tried to smile her thanks; but ventured to remind her aunt that she had not yet thrown off her mourning for her father. The very idea of mixing in the frivolities of fashion was so distasteful to one who had for the last few years been making acquaintance with life in its sternest realities, that she could not wholly conceal her repugnance.

Mrs. Blunden, however, pooh-poohed the objection. It was her will that was to be Florence’s law from henceforth, and she was beginning to dictate already.

“That will be of no consequence. If you assume my name no one need know that you were my poor, foolish brother’s daughter, and any large establishment in London will supply us with the dresses you require at a day’s notice.”

“I will never put off the name of Heriton as though I were ashamed of it!” cried Florence proudly.

Mrs. Blunden reddened.

“As though you were ashamed of it! And so you ought to be ashamed of it! I don’t say the fault is yours, child; but I’m sure my poor brother’s follies have made it so notorious that I’m only too glad I no longer bear it. There! Now I’ve made you cry again. Dear me! You can’t be well to be so easily upset.”

“I don’t think I am very strong-nerved just now,” Florence replied, trying to speak cheerfully. “Suppose we waive any further discussion of your wishes for a day or two. And, dear Aunt Margaret, do try to remember that whatever papa may have done, to me he was a dear and fondly loved parent. If you had heard him bless me ere he died, or listened to his regrets that he could not see you once more and awake your protection for his child, you would not cherish such unkind recollections.”

Mrs. Blunden melted directly.

“I’m a very unfeeling, unchristianly old woman, my dear, to speak in such terms of my only brother. Poor, dear Richard! whom I remember the handsomest and most-popular man in Northumberland. Kiss me, and forgive me, Florence. I’ll never say such cruel things again, and you shall keep your name. It’s one of the oldest in England. There is not a more ancient or honorable family anywhere than the Heritons, let who will say to the contrary.”

Florence gave her impulsive relative the kiss she asked, and then inquired what Mrs. Blunden’s arrangements were, and when she proposed that they should take their departure from Orwell Court.

“Oh, my dear, I’ve come for a month at least! You need not look so surprised. I promised Mr. Aylwinne that my first visit in England should be to him, and so here I am. I have seen him while you were sleeping, and he has pressed me to stay as long as I feel comfortable.”

“I thought we should have gone away at once,” said Florence, to whose heart these weeks of close intimacy with Mr. Aylwinne would be a greater trial than an immediate parting.

“Why? Where do you wish to go?” Mrs. Blunden asked sharply.

“Anywhere you please; I have no choice.”

“Then why do you wish to hurry me away from here? Unless, indeed, you have not been well used. Tell me, child, has Mr. Aylwinne treated you ill in any way?” And the lady’s color began to rise and her eyes to sparkle defiantly.

“No, aunt—no; he has been most kind—most considerate!” was the answer, given with a sigh.

Mrs. Blunden still looked unsatisfied.

“But you must have a motive for proposing to go away before I have scarcely had time to say half a dozen sentences to my host.”

“Yes,” said Florence sadly, “and my principal one is that I dread the pang of parting, and long to have it over.”

Mrs. Blunden gave herself a cross shake.

“Really, child, you are too sentimental! You don’t mean to tell me that you shall half break your heart at saying good-by to two troublesome little boys and a fidgety old lady?”

“No,” Florence replied, with an effort at indifference. “I’ll not break my heart at parting with any one. I’m sorry I said anything about it; and we will go or stay, just as you please, Aunt Margaret.”

“As for Mr. Aylwinne, you have seen too little of him to feel any regrets on his account,” Mrs. Blunden went on, answering her own thoughts more than her niece’s words. “Neither is he the sort of man to captivate a young girl’s fancy. He is too staid—too reserved; besides, I have my doubts about him.”

“Doubts, Aunt Margaret?” cried Florence breathlessly. “What do you know? What have you heard?”

“Pooh! Nothing tangible, so never repeat it. But there’s no denying that he’s very eccentric; and it’s my own opinion that his brain is slightly affected. You know he had been in India for some years, which might account for it.”

Florence turned away from her in a pet. Mr. Aylwinne—the keen observer, the profound scholar, the man of business habits—declared not only eccentric, but something worse! It was a few minutes before she could answer her aunt’s remarks without betraying her annoyance.

She went, however, with Mrs. Blunden to the rooms prepared for her, and assisted her maid in unpacking, putting the lady in such a good humor by her attentions that she descended to dinner prepared to like every one.

Fred was not well enough to rise again that day, but Florence had found time ere she joined the party below to pay him a short visit, and promise him a longer one in the course of the evening.

As she was leaving him he grasped her dress and drew her back.

“Mrs. Wilson was saying something to Jane just now about an aunt of yours coming here to fetch you away, Donna. But you’ll not leave us, will you?”

Florence stooped and kissed him without replying, for she had seen Mr. Aylwinne enter the room while the boy was speaking, and knew that he, too, was listening to hear what she would say.

When he found that she was silent, he came forward, and Fred in great tribulation turned to his guardian.

“Mr. Aylwinne, she is going away! What shall we do without her? There isn’t any one who has been so good to us since we lost mamma! Can’t you get her to stay? Oh, do, sir—do try! She’d listen to you if you asked her.”

But he, too, was silent; and Florence, to end the awkward pause, said to the excited child soothingly:

“Dear Fred, I am not going yet. Lie down and be quiet, or you will make your head worse. I may not leave you for some weeks to come.”

“But I don’t want you to go at all!” sobbed the boy, and Mr. Aylwinne walked quietly away.

With some trouble Florence reconciled her pupil to the necessity of their separation, and sat by him till he fell asleep.

When she entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Wilson was absent. Her anxiety that the dinner should be perfection to the palates of her employer and his lady guest made her fidget in and out of the kitchen incessantly, until the cook was thrown into a state of desperation, and declared to her sympathizing assistants an intention of sitting down and leaving “missus” to finish the cooking herself.

Mrs. Blunden, unconscious of the turmoil her visit had created in the lower regions, was conversing with Mr. Aylwinne, and recalling some of her traveling experiences for the amusement of Walter, whose bright, intelligent face had taken her fancy. But after her niece entered, the depressed manner she could not shake off attracted her aunt’s notice; and although Florence was not near enough to hear her half-whispered remarks, she was painfully conscious that Mrs. Blunden was adverting to it. Mr. Aylwinne, too, though politeness compelled him to lend an ear, was evidently embarrassed, and anxious to change the subject. This he succeeded in doing when dinner was announced. But in the evening Mrs. Blunden fastened upon him again, and consoled herself for the silence she had promised to observe to Florence, by making him a confidant of all the vexation her poor brother’s folly had cost her.

Growing desperate at last, Florence challenged her aunt to a game at chess, as the only means of quieting her.

“Presently, love. Arrange the men, and I will be with you before you are ready.”

Walter ran to fetch the board and bring a little table closer to the center lamp, and Florence followed him to it. This brought her nearer the talkers, if Mr. Aylwinne can be so named, whose conversational efforts had been vainly directed to turning his companion’s thoughts into another channel.

Mrs. Blunden had not the delicacy to understand or appreciate this. Mr. Heriton’s speculations and losses were patent to the whole world, and she saw no reason why she should not describe her own feelings in connection with them.

“Yes,” Florence heard her say, “though the act was that foolish child’s, I’m sure, from what my solicitor has since told me, that it was at my brother’s pressing solicitations; and I know it was drawn out to put into the hands of that wicked rogue we were speaking about. Florence,” she added, in louder tones, “Florence, my dear, am I not right? Didn’t your legacy go to swell Lieutenant Mason’s gains?”

Mr. Aylwinne, who had striven to prevent the putting of the question, started up and left the room; but as he went he saw Florence redden to the temples, and heard her indignant and reproachful exclamation: “Aunt Margaret!”

“Well, my dear,” was the placid reply, “what harm have I done in alluding to this? You forget that every one knows it, and I chose Mr. Aylwinne to understand that I never gave your poor father any encouragement in his follies.”

Florence could have cried with vexation. Instead of her aunt’s presence being a comfort to her, her feelings had been tried already more than they had been for months. But Mrs. Blunden could not be made to see this. The only hope was that, as she had relieved herself by saying all she thought upon the painful subject, she would now be contented to let it rest.

Mr. Aylwinne came back no more that night, sending an apology for his absence, which was graciously received; and Florence, with aching head and troubled mind, played chess with Mrs. Blunden till the latter grew out of patience with her careless moves, and proposed that they should go to bed.

After this first day Aunt Margaret proved more agreeable and manageable than her niece had anticipated. Mrs. Wilson, to whom her activity and decision were something remarkable, deferred to her visitor continually, and Mrs. Blunden, always pleased to be made of consequence, arranged her store closet for her, set her books in order, and advised and directed with a brisk precision that the poor, little, nervous housekeeper thought wonderful.

Mrs. Blunden liked children—that is, boys; girls were too quiet in their habits to please her. Before she had been at Orwell Court three days she had made the acquaintance of all Walter’s and Fred’s schoolfellows, and organized cricket and running matches, and archery meetings, at which she presided in state, and gave prizes to the winners. The sight of her cheerful face and portly figure was hailed with delight at the vicarage, where she soon made herself quite at home both with Mr. Lumley and the prim little lady, his only sister, who resided with him. She even penetrated the secret of Miss Lumley’s sober looks, and learned that she was losing hope and youth in the suspense of a long engagement to a curate too poor to marry. Mrs. Blunden immediately set all her energies to work to procure this young man a living, and, by dint of indefatigable efforts, was successful.

Every one’s services at Orwell Court were then enlisted in the preparation of a simple trousseau for the grateful bride, Aunt Margaret deprecating any further delays.

Mr. Aylwinne, whose purse was at her command, would sometimes come into the room where the cutting out and contriving were going on at one table, while Florence and her pupils studied at another. He would stand by, watching them all with looks which never brightened into a smile, save when Mrs. Blunden addressed him, and then Florence could see that it was but a forced attempt to appear gay.

“How is it? You are the only idler among us,” Mrs. Blunden said to him laughingly, one day, as he stood beside her.

“Because you never take interest enough in me to give me occupation,” he retorted.

With another jest, she offered him her scissors; but he declined them.

“No, I will not expose my ignorance of female arts and sciences. But if there is anything I can do, you may command me.”

Mrs. Blunden pointed to a newspaper.

“Read to us. I have been too busy to inquire how the world goes on; and Florence never cares to know.”

Mr. Aylwinne drew forward a chair, and began glancing down the columns.

“What will you have? The court movements, the state of the funds, or the fashions?”

“Neither,” was the reply. “Let us hear the general news—the accidents, and robberies, and so on.”

He read two or three police reports, and turned over the page to find something else likely to interest her; then, starting from his seat, with his eyes riveted on the page to which he had turned, he carried it to the window, where for a few moments he stood absorbed in something that appeared possessed of some extraordinary interest to him.

Startled by his hasty movement, Florence had raised her eyes from the drawing she was overlooking. She saw him turn very pale, flush as deeply, and drop the newspaper; opening the sash, he stepped out onto the lawn, and before Mrs. Blunden missed him he had plunged into the shrubbery.

“What! Is he gone? I thought he would soon tire of reading aloud; I detest it myself. Come here, Florence, and tell me whether you think these trimmings should be pink or blue.”

Her niece obeyed so far as to cross the room and say a quiet “Yes,” and “No,” in accordance with Mrs. Blunden’s wishes. But when her aunt released her, she snatched up the newspaper and carried it to her own room.

There were two paragraphs on which his eye must have rested, for they were close together. One announced a serious accident to the daughter of Major Dawson, of 120 Park Villas, the young lady having been thrown from her horse while riding in Rotten Row. The other reported the death, at San Francisco, in a gaming house, of Lieutenant Mason, son of the late Mr. and Lady Catherine Mason, of the Brae House, Northumberland.

Which of these reports was it that had so powerfully affected Mr. Aylwinne? Florence’s jealous heart answered, “The first—the first!” for the injured girl was one of those fair sisters of whom Mrs. Wilson had spoken when the subject of his marriage was touched upon.

Would she die? Or would she recover and become his wife?

CHAPTER XVIII.

SUSPENSE.

For two or three days Florence could not resist secretly watching Mr. Aylwinne. He did not go to town, as she had expected he would, but he wrote several letters, and seemed unusually impatient for the arrival of the post. There was an inexplicable change, too, in his manner toward herself. Without actually avoiding her, he seemed to hold himself aloof, to address her with increased respect and consideration, and to lower his tones as if some great sympathy for her were striving within him.

Florence flushed to the temples as she imagined a reason for this. He had missed the newspaper, had guessed whose hand had abstracted it, and divined the feelings with which she had discovered his interest in its contents.

Ashamed to have so betrayed herself, she tried to appear careless and light-hearted, but succeeded so ill that even Aunt Margaret detected something amiss, and openly wondered what ailed her.

“I cannot understand that girl,” she said to Mr. Aylwinne confidentially. “I’m sure she has some secret she keeps from me, which is most ungenerous of her, for she knows how much I abhor mysteries and deceit.”

“Miss Heriton wants a change,” he answered abruptly. “She must go away from here, or she will have an illness. Take her to the seaside, Mrs. Blunden, and let my wards go with you. She will then have less time to be lonely and brood over her sorrows.”

“Sorrows!” Mrs. Blunden ejaculated, almost angrily. “Good gracious! Why, she has none; or, if she has, it’s very unthankful of her! She knows I shall make a provision for her future, whether she marries or remains single, and I’m neither exacting nor ill-natured. Sorrows indeed!”

“The young have many thoughts they do not always care to publish,” he replied evasively, “and Miss Heriton may have had troubles in her father’s lifetime which have robbed her of her natural cheerfulness.”

“It’s more likely that the heat of the weather has affected her,” said Aunt Margaret, unable to enter into his ideas. “I’m afraid she has her mother’s delicate constitution. I was very inconsiderate not to think of that before. Poor child!” she added, all her better feelings awakening. “I’ve no doubt she has felt languid and poorly for some time, and would not confess it for fear of alarming me. I’ll have a physician from London directly, and he shall counsel me where to take her.”

Accordingly Mrs. Blunden dispatched a telegram for one of the highest medical authorities, who arrived before the astonished Florence knew he was on his way. To please her aunt she saw him, although protesting that nothing ailed her.

The physician pronounced her nerves weak, prescribed a simple tonic, agreed with Mrs. Blunden that sea air would prove efficacious, and drove away, and in another hour Orwell Court was in commotion, for the business of packing commenced directly, Aunt Margaret declaring that no time should be lost in effecting the contemplated change.

Mr. Aylwinne, through the agency of a friend, secured them a charming cottage at Babbicombe Bay, and made every arrangement for the comfort of the party that his thoughtful consideration could devise. He had insisted that Mrs. Wilson should accompany them, although she strongly urged the impossibility of leaving him at Orwell Court alone.

“Don’t be uneasy on my account,” he said; “I shall do very well. When I begin to get hipped and miss my comforts I will send for you.”

“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Blunden, who had been engaged with some one else. “Hipped! Why should you be? Of course you will go with us.”

No, he answered decidedly—he should not leave home until he had received some letters for which he was daily looking.

“But you’ll join us?”

He hesitated. He did not know. He could not say. He would be guided by circumstances.

She was a little annoyed at her nonsuccess in prevailing with him, and bade him but a cold farewell. He either would not or did not notice this, but insisted on accompanying them to the railway station, at which, owing to Mrs. Blunden’s impatience, they arrived nearly half an hour before the train was due.

While the boys wandered about the platform, plying Aunt Margaret with questions, and Mrs. Wilson overlooked the labeling of the luggage, Florence retreated to the waiting room. Here Mr. Aylwinne found her.

“Don’t let me disturb you, Miss Heriton; I have only come to say good-by, and to ask you if there is anything I can do for you in London, where I purpose going to-morrow?”

She said no, and thanked him coldly, but still he lingered.

“I do not wish to force myself into your confidence, yet between old friends like you and me a little license may be permitted. Give me leave to speak freely, will you?”

“I do not know what you can mean,” said Florence, surprised at this preamble.

“Indeed! Then perhaps I am premature—perhaps you do not know. But there is, or, rather, was, a report in one of the daily papers that I fancied you would wish to hear confirmed or contradicted.”

Florence grew crimson with mortification. Even if he guessed the jealous regret she had been nourishing, it was indelicate of him thus to allude to it.

“I have heard all I wish to hear,” she exclaimed, and hurried toward her aunt, who now called out that the train was in sight.

“I have looked my last on Orwell Court,” thought Florence when they were actually on their journey, “perhaps on its master; nor do I think that I would wish to see him again, even if a wish would bring him to my feet. If he has engaged himself to this young girl, how cruel to waver, to keep aloof, now that she is suffering! If the report be false, why torture me with glances and sighs that reveal his affection, even while he plainly says he cannot ask me to be his? I will never see him again if it be possible to avoid it, but persuade Aunt Margaret to travel—to take me somewhere out of the beaten track, where even his name cannot reach my ear, and it may be possible in time to forget him.”

CHAPTER XIX.

STILL A MYSTERY.

Susan Denham—never a very good correspondent—had only written once to Florence since she had been residing at Orwell Court, and that was to regret the length of time Miss Heriton’s letter announcing her father’s death had lain unopened, owing to her own absence from home and subsequent illness.

But soon after Mrs. Blunden had established herself at Babbicombe Bay a letter was forwarded to Florence in Susan’s handwriting. It was written in some agitation. A paper, reporting Lieutenant Mason’s death, had been sent to her from New York, with the paragraph underlined; and though the direction was evidently in a disguised hand, Susan felt sure that she recognized some of Julia’s bold down strokes, and was now all anxiety to obtain further information concerning her unhappy cousin.

“I have often thought,” she wrote, “that she might have pursued her misguided husband with the intention of compelling from him the proofs of her marriage. Perhaps she was with him at the time of his dreadful death, and now lingers in America, too miserable to seek my sympathy. How can I learn this? Dear Miss Heriton, can you advise or help me? You speak highly of Mr. Aylwinne in your letters, and you say that he has been a great traveler. Do you think he has any acquaintance with the British consuls in America? Or could tell me my best way of proceeding to trace Julia’s present abode? If you can learn this for me without touching upon her history more than is absolutely necessary, I shall be very thankful, for in all such matters I am sadly inexperienced.”

Florence had not the slightest doubt of Mr. Aylwinne’s readily interesting himself in the affair if he were asked to do so, but she shrank from making any request to him in the present state of her feelings. However, for the sake of the affectionate Susan, she conquered her repugnance; and, having occasion to address him respecting some books he had promised to procure for Walter, but forgotten, she availed herself of the opportunity. Prevented by Susan’s wish from entering into any explanation, she merely inclosed the paragraph, with the following words appended:

“I am very anxious to learn whether this unhappy man was alone at the time of his death. Can you ascertain this for me? Or tell me how I may learn fuller particulars of the occurrence than this report contains?”

With an apology for troubling him, she closed her note and dispatched it; then felt as if she would have given worlds to recall it, and accused herself of folly and boldness in thus opening the way for a correspondence with one whom she had resolved to forget. The thought of Susan waiting eagerly for her reply partially reconciled her to what she had done; but still she tormented herself with conjectures as to what Mr. Aylwinne must have thought of her letter.

The books for Walter were sent in the course of a day or two, with a penciled note to the boy, regretting that they had been so long forgotten. There was also a postscript for Florence:

“Tell Miss Heriton I will attend to her request, and she shall hear the result of my inquiries shortly.”

This was cold and concise enough; so much so, that Florence, whose heart was craving the attentions her reason condemned, felt disappointed. She would not give way to this, but tried to interest herself in the pursuits of Walter and Fred, who were out for hours daily, exploring the rock pools, and bringing home stores of shells, and seaweeds, and marine monsters that frightened Mrs. Wilson and amused Aunt Margaret, who preferred to stay quietly on the beach, with a camp stool and her book.

Coming home one bright, tranquil evening from a longer excursion than usual, they found Mr. Aylwinne sitting on the sands with the elder ladies. He shook hands with his wards, congratulated Florence on the improvement in her looks, and then sat very silent until she went indoors, when he rose and followed her.

The weary boys had thrown themselves down at Mrs. Blunden’s feet, and no one seemed disposed to move even when Mrs. Wilson put away her knitting needles, and wondered whether she ought not to go in and order tea.

“Florence is there. She will call us when it is ready. Pray sit still,” said Aunt Margaret, who had suddenly awakened to the fact that there was something significant in the deep blush that mantled on her niece’s cheek when she beheld Mr. Aylwinne, and saw no reason why she should interfere, if it betokened the dawning of a love affair.

Florence had gone into the drawing room and taken off her hat, unconscious that any one had followed her, until she turned, and saw in the twilight pervading the apartment the object who filled her thoughts.

“Did I startle you?” he asked, without advancing. “I fancied you would be glad to have the information you sought at the earliest moment. Shall I tell you at once what I have ascertained? Or would you rather hear it when——”

“At once, if you please,” she said quickly. “But is it possible that you have obtained tidings from California already?”

“I must acknowledge,” he answered, “that I instituted inquiries respecting this matter some time since. I only received a reply to them yesterday.”

Florence sat down to listen, and he went on in a slow, hesitating manner, as if it pained him to tell the tale of his countryman’s disgraceful fate.

“The report you sent me is perfectly correct so far as it goes. The additional particulars an eyewitness has given me are too painful to repeat. Lieutenant Mason undoubtedly provoked the attack by which he lost his life.”

Florence thought of the poor mother who had never ceased to hope and pray for her son’s reformation, and covered her eyes with her hand.

“To the question you asked me, ‘Was he alone?’ I must answer ‘Yes.’ But my informant avers that after the death a young female——Shall I go on? Is this a tale for your ears?”

“Oh, I beseech you tell me all!” she cried breathlessly. Was the clue found at last? Had Julia indeed followed the heartless man who had so cruelly deserted her?

Mr. Aylwinne obeyed.

“A young female laid claim to the papers of the deceased, averring that she had a legal right to their possession, and promising to appear at the inquest. When this took place, however, she had disappeared—having, it was discovered, taken her departure for New York.”

“And this is all?” said Florence inquiringly, finding that he paused.

“All I have been able to gather at present. But if you can suggest anything——”

“A thousand thanks,” she answered hastily. “But, no; I must consult my friend.” And then Florence’s head went down on her hand again with a thrill of pity, as she pictured the struggles and privations Julia must have endured—nay, might now be enduring, a stranger in a strangers’ land, too proud to beseech her cousin’s assistance, unless she had been successful in obtaining the proofs of her marriage.

When she looked up Mr. Aylwinne had gone. He had returned to the group on the beach; and when, warned by the increasing chilliness of the night, they came in, he still lingered on the sands with his cigar, pacing to and fro in the moonlight.

Mrs. Blunden cast a searching look at her niece when she came into her room to bid her good night.

“What had Mr. Aylwinne to say to you, Florence? Anything very interesting?”

“No, Aunt Margaret—at least, it would not interest you. It was merely some information I had asked him to procure for me.”

Mrs. Blunden’s “Oh!” was sharp and suspicious, but Florence’s was not the face of a young lady who has within the last hour accepted or rejected a suitor, and she was forced to conclude that she was mistaken.

The boys were urgent on the following morning to know whether their guardian intended remaining.

“You’d better, sir,” pleaded Fred, “for there’s splendid walks all round about; and if you were here we might have a boat and sail to lots of places where the Donna don’t like to trust us with only old Sam, the boatman. Do stay!”

“Yes, do!” echoed Mrs. Blunden. “I don’t mind confessing that I find a house very dull when it only contains three women and some children. I begin to want amusement.”

Mr. Aylwinne smiled at her frankness, while Mrs. Wilson looked shocked.

“To-day, at all events, I will devote to la Reine Marguerite; but whether I am to continue in her suite or not must depend”—he hesitated and colored a little—“must depend on circumstances.”

“And what are circumstances?” queried Mrs. Blunden. “I can’t understand a lord of the creation being governed by whim or accident, and calling himself the creature of circumstances. Why not say decidedly I do or I do not choose to stay?”

“Because,” he answered, in lowered tones, “I am not just at present master of my own actions. After this candid confession you will spare me, will you not?”

Mrs. Blunden shook her head, and glanced from him to Florence, as she had done more than once already. But she gained nothing by her scrutiny, for the face of her niece was turned from her, and she was listening with apparent interest to an extraordinary dream that had visited Mrs. Wilson’s slumbers.

“There is something here that I can’t quite comprehend,” muttered Aunt Margaret. “I shall watch them closely, and draw my own conclusions.”

She had but scant opportunities for carrying out her intentions. Mr. Aylwinne planned one of the sailing excursions for which the boys had been teasing him, and in high spirits they all set forth, except Florence, who was anxious to write a long letter to Susan Denham, and stayed at home for this purpose. She related all that she had learned from Mr. Aylwinne, and advised Susan to send some advertisements to the New York papers, worded in such a manner that they would be likely to catch the eye of Julia, and assure her of her cousin’s wish that she would return to England.

It was late before the boating party returned—so late that Florence was beginning to feel surprised, if not uneasy, at their absence—when Mr. Aylwinne came in alone.

She threw down her work, and rose to meet him.

“Has anything happened?”

“Nothing that need alarm you. Our friends have been detained by an hospitable acquaintance of Mrs. Blunden’s, who insists that they stay to take tea with her; and I came to acquaint you with the reason of the delay, and to ask you if you will join them.”

“I had rather not,” said Florence, who still shrank from the gay, gossiping people in whom her Aunt Margaret delighted.

Mr. Aylwinne did not press her going, but he said:

“It is not right that you should lose the whole of this lovely day indoors. Will you not walk along the beach to meet them?”

A little embarrassed by the request, she would have declined, but he said:

“Do not refuse, Florence—I may never ask aught from you again.”

Her confusion was greatly increased by the low, deep tones in which he spoke. Scarcely knowing what she did, she took up her hat, threw a light mantle over her shoulders, and stepped out into the garden. He followed, and, drawing her hand through his arm, led her in the contrary direction to that he had proposed.

If Florence was conscious of this, she made no remark. She knew that the arm on which she rested trembled strangely, and that the eyes looking down upon her had in them the same soft light, the same tender affection, that beamed in them when Frank Dormer held her to his breast the day he saved her from destruction on the banks of the Coquet.

As if he, too, were thinking of that moment, he said:

“Do you remember how you wished you had something to give me? And how I answered that if you were the same Florence on my return that I left I would ask you for what would be more precious to me than aught else the world can contain? You were too young and childish to comprehend me then, or to guess how the only hope I carried away with me was of returning to ask you to be mine.”

“Why do you persist in referring to these things?” said Florence resentfully.

“Do you bid me be silent? Do you bid me leave you? Or will you not say ‘Stay, and leave me no more?’”

She flashed one look of glad surprise at the earnest speaker; then, checked by the recollection of his strange behavior, exclaimed:

“Should you ask me this—you, who have yourself acknowledged——”

He would not let her finish the sentence.

“Hush! That is all past and gone now. We are both free, and no foolish punctilios shall stand between us. You are the same Florence I have always loved; and there shall be no more looking back. Never allude to what has been. It maddens me to think of it! For my sake do not recur to it, for I cannot bear it!”

He left her for a moment as if to recover his self-control; then, drawing her to his side, he gently said:

“If you are the same Florence I loved at the priory—the Florence whose mother blessed and sanctioned my wishes—I say again, be mine!”

She thought of her fallen fortunes.

“Alas! I am not what I was then!”

“Hush!” he cried, almost sternly. “Have I not said that what has happened in all these miserable years of separation shall be blotted out?”

“And the obstacles to our union which you have yourself pronounced——”

“Are they not gone—vanished—swept from our paths by a Providence kinder to us than we deserved? Nay, Florence, than I deserved, for I have been moody, reckless, repining, often doubting you—yes, even you, whom I love so fondly.”

“And I, too, have often been doubtful and depressed,” she faltered, “especially since——” But here she stopped, ashamed to confess how deeply she had felt the estrangement he had himself pronounced unavoidable. She was too much perplexed to be absolutely happy, even though the long-dreamed-of moment had come when Frank Dormer told his love. His mysterious allusions to the past required an explanation he did not seem disposed to give, and this troubled her.

He wound his arm around her.

“You shall never be sad again,” he murmured in her ear, “if my care and devotion can prevent it.”

But she shrank from him a little, and he saw it.

“What is this, Florence? Have you lost your trust in me? Have you been taught to doubt me? Did he who separated us teach you this lesson?”

A cry of pain burst from her lips. She could not hear her father named disrespectfully, however faulty he might have been.

“Oh, Mr. Aylwinne, you speak of the dead! For my sake never say such cruel words again!”

“Then you loved him, Florence, in spite of all?” he asked sadly.

“I strove earnestly and faithfully to do my duty; therefore spare me the grief of feeling that you are hard in your judgment of his actions.”

“You are a true woman,” he said moodily, “ever clinging closest to those who deserve the least at your hands.”

Angry and hurt, she began to retrace her steps, and this brought him back to himself. He followed her, and began to entreat for forgiveness.

“Florence—dear, dearest Florence, on my honor I will never pain you in this manner again. I was wrong—I confess it. I ought to have admired and imitated your generosity. I tell you, love, these sad years have terribly altered me from the Frank you knew. I am harsh in my judgments, as you truly said, and inclined to look always at the worst side of human nature. But your gentle smile will exorcise all the demons, and restore me to my better self. Speak, Florence! Shall we steadily put the bygone years behind us, and look forward—always forward?”

She no longer withheld herself from his embrace—she no longer hesitated to ask herself why he had not said this sooner. His eyes were looking into hers. She knew even without words or promises that she had his love; and if her tears began to flow fast they were not sorrowful ones.

“You will be mine at once, Florence?” he said, as they again walked on together. “As quietly and privately as you please, but let it be at once.”

“You are too exacting,” she murmured, startled by the suddenness of the proposal. “I cannot consent to this.”

“What! Do you deny my first request?” he jealously demanded.

“Is it not an unreasonable one?” she queried, in her turn. “I have Aunt Margaret to consider; while I should wish you to have time to ask yourself what the world will say to your union with poor me.”

“If I had not determined beforehand to let the world and the world’s opinions have no part in my plans, I had not been here, Florence,” he answered, with a gravity which contrasted strongly with the playfulness of her own manner. “I am no waverer to be blown hither and thither by the whispers of indifferent people; and let those who think to meddle with my private concerns look to it! I brook no interference from any one!”

The sunshine died out of Florence’s face, and all the old, anxious conjectures began to come back. Could she be happy as Frank Dormer’s wife if she had to learn that he had for her sake broken the ties that should have bound him to another?

She was not sorry that Walter and Fred came in search of them, and prevented any further conversation. But at the door Mr. Aylwinne sent the boys in and held her back.

“Tell me, Florence,” he whispered, “is it to be as I wish?”

“Ah, no!” she faltered. “Give me time—a little time!”

“For what?” he demanded, with the earnest gravity that would have a reply. “For what? Is it for appearance sake? Or because you are not sure that your heart is in my keeping?”

“If you knew——” Florence began, almost indignant at the implied doubt, then paused. “But no; I will tell you nothing more. You ought to know that I am incapable of playing the coquette.”

He took both her hands in his, and drawing her to him, kissed her fervently. But at the same moment he breathed so deep a sigh that Florence, as soon as she was released, stole away in the dark to her own room, trembling with some inexplicable fear. What could it mean? What was this cloud that not even the assurance of her love had banished from his brow?

CHAPTER XX.

NOT QUITE HAPPY.

Mrs. Blunden looked volumes at the heavy eyes with which her niece appeared at the breakfast table on the following morning; nor did the tender solicitude of Mr. Aylwinne’s manner, as he rose to give Florence a chair, and hovered about her till rewarded with a blush and smile, escape her notice. She had scarcely patience to sit still till the meal was ended; and as soon as she had found a pretext for getting rid of Mrs. Wilson and the boys, she began to query sharply:

“What’s all this, Mr. Aylwinne—Florence—what’s all this?”

In much confusion Florence played with her teaspoon without any attempt to reply; but her lover’s answer was prompt and decided:

“It means, Aunt Margaret, that I have asked and obtained a boon, subject, of course, to your approval. Will you give me your Florence?”

Mrs. Blunden smiled quizzically.

“You are very polite, certainly; but, judging by what I know of my niece, she will follow her own inclinations, whether I say a yea or a nay to them. There, you needn’t redden and pretend to contradict me, child. You have the Heriton temper, like my poor brother, whom it led into all sorts of follies.”

“Shall you consider your niece’s acceptance of my hand in a similar light?” Mr. Aylwinne gravely inquired, while Florence’s annoyance at her aunt’s blunt speech ended in a smile at the retort it provoked.

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Blunden replied, with a gravity as great as his own, and much more real. “If I were not satisfied on the score of your worthiness to espouse her, I should have taken her away as soon as I had occasion to suspect your affection.”

“And you see no reason to object to our immediate union, I hope?” Mr. Aylwinne observed, without appearing to see the embarrassment of his betrothed.

Mrs. Blunden raised her eyebrows.

“Why, this is being in a hurry with a vengeance! Pray, when did you put the momentous question to my niece? In the character of her guardian, I consider that I have a right to know this.”

“Florence and I have understood each other since—last night,” he answered, with a little hesitation.

“Last night! And propose to be married to-morrow?” cried Aunt Margaret sarcastically. “Surely, Florence, you are no party to this—well, I really must call it indecorous haste?”

“My dear Mrs. Blunden,” said Mr. Aylwinne, interposing to prevent Florence’s reply, “if we are assured that we love each other, and may hope to spend our future together, what delay is required? Why oppose my wish to commence our new life as quickly as possible?”

“Since when have you resolved to make Florence your wife?” her aunt demanded. “Since when have these important plans been arranged?”

“I knew and loved her before I went to India,” he answered evasively.

“Humph!” said Mrs. Blunden dryly. “If you have been contented to wait patiently all these years, I certainly think you can exercise sufficient forbearance to let a suitable trousseau be prepared for your bride, and proper settlements drawn up. What say you, Florence? Have you pledged yourself to have no voice in the matter, that you sit there so silent?”

“I have already pleaded with Mr. Aylwinne for more time,” was the murmured reply.

He looked vexed and inclined to be angry as he retorted:

“You certainly did; but when I reminded you that this was my first request, I thought you had sufficient trust in me to withdraw your opposition.”

“Nay!” said Mrs. Blunden positively. “I will not give you my child—for I consider her in that light—if she is to be hurried out of the house secretly, as though there was something in your choice of which you were ashamed. If you have loved Florence so long, why did you not give me a hint of your intentions sooner?”

Mr. Aylwinne was silent; and Florence, who had raised her head eagerly to listen for his explanation, was disappointed.

“Well, good people,” cried Aunt Margaret brusquely, as she gathered up her gloves and handkerchief, “it appears that I am not to know more than you choose to tell me; and perhaps my wishes will be set at naught, after all.”

“No, dear aunt—no—no!” cried her niece, running to her, and throwing her arms around her neck. “Not by me; nor will Mr. Aylwinne be unreasonable. You shall not have to accuse me of disobedience to your commands, even for his sake. I will be guided by you, Aunt Margaret.”

Tears rose into Mrs. Blunden’s eyes as she heartily returned the affectionate embrace. She was appeased by this entire submission, and half sobbed, half said:

“Child, it will be so hard to part with you that I should not be begrudged the pleasure of having you with me a few weeks longer. I was never really angry with you but once, my little Florry, and I have repented that ever since. I’m sure,” she added, sobbing still more audibly, “when you wrote, thanking me so gratefully for sending you a hundred pounds, and dwelling upon the use it had been and comforts it had procured my poor, foolish brother, I felt that I had been dreadfully cruel to have withheld what some one with more Christian charity had bestowed. By the bye,” she cried abruptly, “who sent you that money? Was it Mr. Aylwinne?”

“No, madam,” he answered shortly.

“Really, now! And did you know nothing about it?”

For a moment or two he did not reply; but, meeting the questioning glance of Florence, whose keener perception had divined that he was withholding something, he said slowly:

“I have reason to know—that is, I accidentally learned that the inclosure of that note to Miss Heriton was one of Lieutenant Mason’s last acts before quitting England.”

Florence uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

“Is it possible? Heaven forgive me! I judged him more harshly than I should have done had I known that he repented his conduct so far as to do this.”

Mr. Aylwinne turned to the window without replying, but Mrs. Blunden cried:

“Pish! You could not think worse of him than he deserved. He did but give you back a part of your own. And now let me go. If this wedding is to be a hurried affair, as I suppose it will be in spite of my protest, I must go and talk to my maid about the fashions, and so forth.”

When she had bustled out of the room, Florence went softly to where Mr. Aylwinne was moodily standing, and, laying her hand on his arm, she whispered:

“You are not angry with me, are you?”

“What for?” he replied. “For trying to think your best of that miserable man?”

“I was not thinking of him at all, but of you, and your wishes.”

He drew her to him fondly.

“Were you really? And if Mrs. Blunden can be prevailed upon, will you promise to make no delays? Don’t you see that I am eager to take you right away—to teach you in a sunnier land, and among fresh scenes and faces, to forget all the old haunting associations that now pale your cheek and sadden you?”

“But I would not wholly forget them,” said Florence; “for surely in those sorrowful years I have learned lessons that shall make me more humble, more thoughtful for others, more pitiful to the erring, and compassionate to those who need it.”

“You are the living image of your mother, my Florence!” he exclaimed admiringly. “It is just in this way that she would have gathered flowers amid the thorns that bestrewed her path. And you are right—I know you are, though I cannot emulate your sweet patience and forbearance. I must still hate those who have injured you, and rail at the fate that separated us so long.”

“Did you not yourself propose that we should not speak of that sorrowful past?” she said uneasily, as she saw his eyes flash and brows lower.

“True, love—true, I did; and so it shall be. You do well to check me. You must do so always, and I will try to be more careful.”

“And yet,” said Florence, trembling a little as she felt that she was approaching a dangerous subject, “and yet I think we should both be happier if there were perfect confidence between us—I mean if we had no reservations; but——”

“I understand you, Florence,” he exclaimed, in great agitation, “and I appreciate your motives; but spare me—pray spare me! I lack the courage for such miserable details. Let us be content to know that our love has never wavered, however adverse circumstances have divided us. And it never has, has it, my Florence?”

To this she could truly answer “No,” and he seemed satisfied. But the old cloud had not gone, and Florence felt more than ever that their felicity could not be perfect while it was so.

Yet when he tenderly pressed her to promise that she would be his at the earliest period Mrs. Blunden could be prevailed upon to concede, she knew not how to refuse his ardent prayers. As he basked in the light of her smiles he became more and more like the Frank Dormer so well remembered, so unceasingly regretted. It was only when an hour of solitude enabled her to review all he had said that she was again compelled to acknowledge the galling fact that there was some important passage of his life which he withheld from her; some act or deed—whether of his own or another’s—which was an ever-present trouble to his harassed mind, and poisoned even the bliss of their reunion.

CHAPTER XXI.

A WHISPERED WORD.

Mrs. Blunden, having once made up her mind to her niece’s marriage, quickly laid aside all her objections, and went heart and soul into the preparations she considered necessary for so important an affair.

Mrs. Wilson was her delighted assistant, for she was sincerely attached to Florence, and considered her worthy to become the wife of Mr. Aylwinne, even though he was in her eyes of all men the most peerless.

The boys were wild with joy when it was whispered to them that the Donna would soon become the bride of their guardian, and hung about their gentle governess with an affection that would not be repressed.

Mrs. Blunden proposed that they should remove at once to London, where the very handsome trousseau she intended to purchase could be more easily procured; while Mrs. Wilson was impatient to return to Orwell Court, in order to commence the cleaning and polishing she thought the house and furniture would require before it was fit for the reception of its lovely young mistress.

Florence was passive in the hands of her aunt, and raised no objections to anything she proposed; but Mr. Aylwinne would not hear of quitting Babbicombe Bay for the noisy metropolis; and by dint of an obstinacy equal to her own, he finally won from Mrs. Blunden a consent to stay where she was until the nuptial rite was celebrated.

Florence, naturally domesticated and attached to Orwell Court, would have liked to go quietly home after her marriage. Mr. Aylwinne’s prolonged wanderings must, she fancied, have wearied him of other lands; yet it was he who sketched out a route which must detain them abroad for many months.

She pointed this out to her lover, and hinted her own wish that they might at all events return to England in time to keep their Christmas at Orwell Court; but his answer, though affectionate, was unsatisfactory.

“I shall not bring my darling back till she has learned to forget. When she wears the bright, untroubled face of the Florence I remember, then, and not till then, shall I be content.”

“And do you think it possible that I can ever again be the gay, careless child you then knew?” she asked, with a sigh. “Or shall I be less dear to you because contact with the world has taught me to think and to suffer?”

“Hush, love—hush! Whenever your voice takes that mournful strain it brings back memories that unfit me for everything. Let me have my way, Florence. If I seem obstinate, it is because I have my own ideas of what will be best for your happiness.”

“You think of me always and only, dear Frank,” she replied. “And there are the boys to be considered. I cannot help remembering their blank looks when they heard we were going away for an indefinite period. They will be very lonely, poor children!”

He was pleased at her thoughtful consideration for his wards, but answered directly:

“They must live as I did for years, upon hope; they will have one comfort I never had—your letters.”

She smiled and said no more. It seemed almost ungrateful to urge the claims of others any longer, while he was so bent upon remembering only hers.

Her speech had, however, set Mr. Aylwinne thinking. He was averse to leaving Walter and Fred with Mrs. Wilson as sole authority over them; for, with the kindest intentions, she was scarcely adapted for such a charge. He had asked Mr. Lumley to take them as boarders at the vicarage, but the good clergyman had lost his right hand in losing his sister, and was proposing to lessen the number of his pupils instead of increasing them.

“We must advertise for a gouvernante for the lads, and put up with her, if she does not prove a second Miss Heriton,” Mr. Aylwinne said as he discussed his wishes with Florence.

She, too, looked thoughtful for a brief interval, but then her eye lit up with pleasure.

“What will you say if I agree to find you a good, gentle woman far more capable of managing them than I have ever been?”

“Say! Why, that I will engage with her at once, leaving the terms to you,” he replied. “But who is this rara avis?”

“Her name is Denham—Susan Denham,” said Florence, a shade of pensiveness deepening upon her brow as she spoke. “I learned to know and love her at a time of great anxiety. I cannot tell you how often her sympathy and good counsel comforted me.”

Mr. Aylwinne made no reply for a few minutes. He was intently watching the downcast face of his betrothed.

“Of what period are you speaking? May I ask?”

“Of the time when we were living in West Street, Brompton,” Florence answered. “I had no other friend then but Susan Denham.”

“My poor love!” he exclaimed tenderly; then relapsed again into silence, till she cried, with more cheerfulness:

“Well, what say you? Shall I try and prevail upon Susan to give up her present situation—I know she is not very well satisfied with it—and come to Orwell Court?”

“No,” Mr. Aylwinne decisively replied. “I will have no one about you who can recall the hours it will be the business of my life to prevent your remembering.”

“But Susan is in every way fitted for the duties I propose her taking,” Florence persisted. “And, indeed, dear Frank, it would please me much to insure and personally overlook her comforts.”

“You shall do that. You shall amply repay every obligation you lie under to this good woman. I will settle an annuity upon her, my dearest, which will give her a competence for the rest of her life.”

“You are too generous,” Florence murmured, grateful for his kindness to her friend, yet disappointed that he would not accede to her wishes. “But I do not think Susan would accept such a gift. She has an independent spirit, and would much rather work for what she receives.”

“We must contrive to keep her in ignorance of the source from whence she derives the income,” was the answer.

“And Walter and Fred? Indeed, dear Frank, I should feel much easier about our boys if I might leave them in such excellent hands as Susan’s.”

“My dear Florence,” said Mr. Aylwinne, with increasing gravity, “you have a morbid tendency to cherish the very recollections I seek to banish. You don’t seem to see that the continual presence of Miss Denham would encourage this. Love, you must let me do as I propose in this matter.”

With a little pettishness, Florence withdrew her hand from his arm.

“And I thought my own idea such an excellent one. Can you not reconcile your pride to letting me have my own way for once?”

“You shall have it, not once, but always, in everything, except what concerns yourself,” he answered, kissing her cheek. “Now go and get your hat, and let us escape before Mrs. Blunden pounces upon you for a millinery consultation. I know it is pending, for I saw her pass the door ten minutes ago, with a huge packet of patterns and trimmings fresh from London.”

Only too glad to avoid one of the long inflictions with which Aunt Margaret tried her patience but too often, Florence obeyed. It was some time, however, before she could recover her usual tone, for she felt greatly disappointed at his determination with regard to Susan Denham.

He saw that she was vexed, and redoubled his usual tenderness, insensibly leading her thoughts away from the disagreeable subject. The morning, too, was a lovely one—soft and hazy with the fast-falling leaves glittering in their autumnal tints beneath a cloudless sky.

Insensibly they wandered on, leaving the seaside for the deep and intricate lanes of the inland country—sometimes talking, sometimes silent; occasionally pausing and resting on a stile or bank, but always happy, for they were together; and every glance, every murmured word, spoke the fullness of their content.

At last, with a start and a bewildered look around him, Mr. Aylwinne paused.

“I haven’t the slightest idea where we are, have you?”

Florence laughed gayly at their dilemma, for she was in equal ignorance; and not a creature was in sight, or a cottage visible where they could make inquiries.

Mr. Aylwinne pulled out his watch.

“By Jove! It is nearly three hours since we left the house! How inconsiderate I am! You must be tired to death.”

“I did not feel it till you spoke; but I will confess now, to wishing myself nearer home. We had better return as quickly as we can.”

“By no means; I could not think of letting you walk back. There must be a village somewhere near here, for I can hear the voices of children. Let me go forward and reconnoiter the neighborhood.”

He climbed a bit of rising ground, and returned to say that he had espied a respectable-looking inn at no great distance. There they could doubtless procure a conveyance to carry them back to the bay, where their absence, if it lasted much longer, would cause uneasiness.

When they reached the inn they were received by a slatternly, sullen-looking woman, who scarcely vouchsafed a civil reply to Mr. Aylwinne’s questions.

“Maybe they could have a chaise—maybe they couldn’t; it was just as her master took in his head.”

“Send him here, then,” said the gentleman imperatively. “And show me the way to a room where this lady can rest a while.”

Still muttering, but somewhat awed by his manner, she obeyed so far as to push open the door of a sitting room. They then heard her screaming to some one upstairs:

“You’re wanted, d’ye hear? Here’s gentry in the parlor, an’ if they wants waiting on you may come and do it! I ain’t going to drudge here while you sits above with your wine and takes your pleasure, I can tell you!”

There was a muttered retort, and then a quick footstep; and the next minute a smart, dapper man was bowing and cringing at the door, and, in very oily tones, requesting the “favior of their horders.”

“Some wine and biscuits, and a vehicle to convey us to Babbicombe Bay as quickly as it can be got ready,” Mr. Aylwinne replied.

“Most certainly, sir. The horse shall be put in the chaise directly. Bless me!” he added, catching a fuller view of Florence’s features. “I beg your parding, I’m sure, but it’s Miss Heriton, ain’t it? I hopes there’s no offense in saying I’m glad to see you so well, miss.”

“Who is this fellow?” Mr. Aylwinne demanded, as he bowed himself out to fetch the wine.

“Do you not remember him? And yet his is a face not easily forgotten,” Florence replied; and, seeing that he still looked puzzled, she added: “He is the ci-devant servant of Lieutenant Mason.”

Mr. Aylwinne hissed an oath between his clenched teeth.

“Could I bring you nowhere but to his house? I will go and hasten the harnessing of the horses that we may get away as quickly as possible.”

He hurried from the room as he spoke, almost upsetting the landlord in his hurry as he entered with a tray.

“The gentleman as took my master’s chambers in the Albany, I believe? Your husband, miss? Excuse me!”

Florence, annoyed at this impertinence, turned to the window without replying; but, nothing daunted, he went on:

“I hope, miss, I may say without offense that I’m glad my foolish little whispered words didn’t do you no harm, and that you bears no malice, for I’m a different man to what I was in those times. I’m married, miss, to that excellent creetur you see. A little temperish she is, but we’ve all our faults, though I’ve repented mine, and hope I can say I’m a reformed character, thanks to a saving grace!”

Florence scarcely heard the end of this hypocritical harangue. The expression he had made use of in the beginning had greatly astonished her; and though she revolted at holding any converse with such a fellow, she could not refrain from asking his meaning.

“To whom did you whisper anything concerning me? To Mr. Aylwinne? And what was it?”

“Oh, miss,” he answered fawningly, “I hope you’ll let bygones be bygones, for there’s no harm done, nor there wasn’t no harm meant. It was only said because he was inclined to be curious like, and I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t so particular then as I ought to have been; but, thanks to a saving grace, I’m——”

What he considered himself the disgusted girl did not stay to hear; but, sweeping past him with a gesture of indignant scorn, she went to the door, and waited there till Mr. Aylwinne came to say the vehicle was ready.

“Have you had a glass of wine? No? But you must not go until you have taken something.”

He was hurrying into the house, when Florence detained him.

“I cannot touch anything in this house. Come away.”

One glance at her agitated face, and he flung down a piece of gold to the obsequious landlord, and lifted her into the chaise. Scarcely a word was interchanged during the homeward ride, and Florence’s replies to her aunt’s scolding for wandering so far were brief in the extreme. But, instead of going to her own room, she followed Mr. Aylwinne to a small apartment to which he generally retreated to write letters, etc.

He looked surprised, but instantly rose from the chair into which he had thrown himself, and came to meet her.

“Sit down again, Frank. I have something to ask you to which I must have a truthful reply. You remember the first time I encountered you at the Albany? Yes, I see you do—and how, when doubtful, I suppose, of my identity, you asked Lieutenant Mason’s servant my name, and he whispered his reply? That whisper contained something more than a simple repetition of my name. Tell me—I entreat, I command you—what it was!”

CHAPTER XXII.

A TARDY EXPLANATION.

While Florence Heriton, her lips quivering, her eyes glittering with excitement, was thus earnestly addressing her lover, Mr. Aylwinne had continued to stand before her, an agitated but attentive listener.

But when she ceased speaking, a spasm of pain contracted his features, and, dropping heavily into his chair, he covered his face with his hand.

“Why do you speak of this?” he asked, in low, uncertain tones. “Let it suffice that I have long known all; and pray do not recur again to a topic so fraught with misery to both of us.”

“You speak in riddles!” she retorted, her excitement and determination to be enlightened increasing with his evident reluctance to satisfy her. “You speak in riddles! I have never had anything to conceal, as you would seem to imply. Tell me your meaning frankly; for that man has aroused within me doubts and fears which nothing but your explanation can allay.”

He rose, and, coming toward her, would have taken her in his arms.

She stepped back and prevented this; but, without noticing the repulse, he said affectionately:

“My Florence, if in the first paroxysm of my natural grief and distress I permitted myself to think harshly of you, a more intimate knowledge of my darling’s character has made me repent this. I am satisfied that you were deceived—misled—that you never really knew what you were doing. And now let us say no more, for I lose all self-command when I think of your wrongs.”

Again Florence put back the hands that were extended to clasp her.

“Not yet. I must and will know what all this means! Tell me, Frank, I conjure you, what you have heard from this man!”

“Do you still persist? Why should you, when you see how painful it is to me? Have you never imagined that that fellow was deep in all his master’s secrets?”

Florence stamped her foot in an agony of impatience.

“I never thought about it. What was it to me? Why torture me with this hesitation? What was the whispered word that filled you with such strange thoughts of me?”

With evident reluctance and unwillingness, Mr. Aylwinne at last replied:

“He told me the nature of your errand at the Albany.”

“Well? Was there aught in it for which you could condemn me?”

“Certainly not, if”—then there was another tormenting pause—“if you still believed yourself a wife.”

Florence recoiled in dismay.

“I a wife! Whose? Lieutenant Mason’s? Nay, he dared not tell you this!”

Mr. Aylwinne smiled bitterly.

“Do you think that such a man would hesitate to prove false to any trust, or that compassion for deceived innocence is to be found in one so crafty and designing?”

“There was none reposed in him,” she answered. “It is you—you who have been deceived. I never spoke to Lieutenant Mason nor saw him after we quitted the priory.”

Mr. Aylwinne now looked utterly bewildered. He longed to believe her, yet what she told him was so completely at variance with all he had hitherto fancied to be true, that his mind was thoroughly confused.

In agitation far greater than her own, he exclaimed:

“For Heaven’s sake, Florence, do not palter with me! If a natural womanly shame at the unmerited disgrace that fell upon you has hitherto sealed your lips, to me you may surely speak openly! Or if I ask what gives you pain, bid me be silent, and I will faithfully obey.”

“Yet answer me this,” she cried: “Have you actually believed me united to Lieutenant Mason—believed that I came to your house a deserted wife, hiding her shame beneath a name she had no longer a right to bear?”

Mr. Aylwinne did not reply. All his deeply rooted convictions shaken by her indignant earnestness, he stood gazing at her in troubled silence.

With rising anger, Florence passionately exclaimed:

“If I have ever felt disgraced in my own sight it is now that I find you have thought me capable of such infamous concealments! What! you have been regarding me all these months as the discarded victim of a villain, and imagined that under such circumstances I could permit you to woo me?”

He drew his hand across his brow.

“Mason is dead, and you are free. Did I not carefully guard against a look or word that should fright you hence, while another had the shadow of a claim upon you? I can scarcely command my thoughts at this moment; yet surely I have not been mistaken in supposing that you acknowledged a barrier between us, and acceded to my wish that the wrongs you received at Mason’s hands should be never adverted to by either of us?”

“No, no!” cried Florence vehemently. “I never comprehended your half-sorrowful, half-angry allusions to the past. I thought it was of papa and his unfortunate speculations you spoke so angrily. Truth to tell, I have always supposed that some entanglement you did not care to confess to me occasioned your varying manner and your declaration that it was too late for us to love each other.”

“And you have never been another’s, my Florence—my darling!” Mr. Aylwinne murmured, as he joyfully caught her to his breast. “How cruelly I have been deceived! How cold—how unkind I must have appeared to you! And yet,” he added, releasing her and again looking doubtful and unsatisfied, “and yet there is something here I do not understand: I saw you at the Albany—I heard you crave an interview with the profligate lieutenant, and—oh, Florence!—I was the maddened witness of your tears and disappointment when you learned that he had quitted England.”

“And listened,” Florence added, with bitterness, “to the whispers of a man who is, by your own showing, as vile as his master. I insist that you tell me all he said!”

“For what purpose?” he asked. “Surely you must be well aware that your own candid statement will outweigh anything he may have told me.”

But Florence, whose pride had been aroused by his suspicions, persisted, and by degrees drew from him the whole story.

He had partially recognized in the veiled lady waiting to see Lieutenant Mason the form and features of the fair girl he loved devotedly, despite the rejection his suit had received. Shocked to behold her at such a place, he had questioned the servant, obtained equivocal answers, and bribed him to confess more.

His avarice awakened by the sight of Mr. Aylwinne’s gold, this fellow, who really had nothing to tell concerning Florence, poured into the ears of his credulous listener the history of his master’s connection with Julia Denham. Careful to mention no names, he told it more by hints and half sentences than an open relation of facts; and Mr. Aylwinne left him at last, sadly convinced that the beautiful young creature at West Street, Brompton, who had gone through the form of a marriage with Lieutenant Mason was Florence Heriton—the gentle, trusting girl whom for years it had been his cherished dream to win.

This, then, explained all that had so long perplexed Florence in his behavior. It was because he believed her morally if not legally bound to another that he had avoided her. It was in pure compassion that he had, after the first start of surprise, rejoiced that she had found an asylum beneath his roof. Now it became easy enough to find a meaning for all he had said that had hitherto sounded mysterious, as, for instance, his allusions to the recollections of her wrongs as being too painful to bear retrospection.

And then the flush faded from her cheek and left her deathly pale, for she remembered that she had nothing but her own simple assurance to oppose to Mr. Aylwinne’s deeply rooted conviction that she was the unhappy girl Lieutenant Mason had wedded and deserted.

Then in her distress, anger at his credulity began to make itself felt, and, drawing herself up, she proudly said:

“I scorn myself when I think how low an estimate of my character you must have formed to believe this tale. Could I, the Florence whose early years were spent in listening to the teachings of my good, prudent mother, have stooped to the secret addresses of a profligate, and a clandestine marriage?”

Mr. Aylwinne seized her hand.

“You are right; and I was mad, blind to be so easily duped. Only give me your own explanation of your visits to the Albany, and I promise to be satisfied.”

“That is quickly given. I went as the bearer on each occasion of a note from my poor father, whom Lieutenant Mason, by the most specious pretenses, tricked of the only sum of money remaining to us. It was the knowledge that he had ruined us that occasioned my dismay. But do you think that I can be satisfied until my innocence of all connection with this man is fully proved? No, Frank—no! By the memory of my mother I vow that I will never be your wife till that has been done!”

“Florence,” he cried wildly, “unsay those rash words! Mason is no more, and you know full well that there is no one else who can attest the falsity of his servant’s story.”

But Florence would stay to hear no more. Repeating: “I will never become your wife till the slur upon my name has been removed,” she would have fled the room. Mr. Aylwinne saw her intention, and put his back against the door.

“You shall not leave me in anger. I have been over-credulous, I know; yet make some excuses for me. Remember how I saw you: veiled deeply, and evidently in much agitation, earnestly seeking an interview with a young and handsome man, notorious for his gallantry. Can you wonder that, seeing you thus, I was only too ready to believe what I was told?”

Florence flung herself upon his breast with a bitter cry.

“No—no; I do not wonder that you thought the worst of me! Neither do you blame me that I keep to my vow even though our separation rends my heart. Your wife, my Frank, must be above suspicion. I could not be happy if I were yours. The slightest cloud on your brow, the slightest change in your voice, would fill me with dread that your suspicions were returning. Ah, Frank, I cannot—dare not give you my hand until no shadow of so fearful an estrangement can come between us.”

For a moment her lips were pressed to his; and then, resisting all further efforts to detain her, Florence tore herself from his embrace.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CONCLUSION.

Mrs. Blunden was not at all surprised to be told that her niece had gone to her room, pleading excessive fatigue as an excuse for not appearing at the dinner table. But she was greatly concerned when, in consequence of the agitation she had undergone and a night spent in weeping, Florence became seriously ill.

She could not conceal from her aunt that something had happened to cause this; nor did Mrs. Blunden rest until she was put in possession of all the circumstances.

Like all hasty-tempered people, she scarcely waited to hear the end before she began to complain loudly of the little confidence that Florence had reposed in her; nor could she be made to understand why her niece had concealed the secret uneasiness Mr. Aylwinne’s mysterious allusions had frequently occasioned her.

Finding the suffering girl incapable of answering her reproaches, she then turned the torrent of her wrath upon Mr. Aylwinne, declaring his credulity in suspecting a Heriton of allying herself clandestinely with a man of Lieutenant Mason’s character to be quite unpardonable.

Too much harassed by the condition of Florence to attach much weight to anything Mrs. Blunden could say, he permitted her to scold and storm unchecked. He would wait, he said, till Florence was better and able to listen calmly to his reasoning. She, at least, would acquit him of knowingly wronging her.

This opportunity, however, Mrs. Blunden did not intend him to have. Always rash and hot-headed, she determined to seize on the opportunity of his riding to the nearest town for further advice, to remove her niece, and take her by express train to London.

But the angry lady’s exordiums and violent anger against her betrothed had made Florence so much worse that she became delirious; and her alarmed aunt soon showed herself as eager to implore Mr. Aylwinne’s advice and sympathy as she had been to repudiate it.

“She speaks constantly of some one of the name of Denham—Julia Denham, I think,” cried the tearful Aunt Margaret. “She asks for her frequently. What shall I do?”

“It must be Susan Denham whose presence she craves,” Mr. Aylwinne answered. “I will go to town and find her.”

His search assisted by an old letter Mrs. Blunden found in Florence’s desk, he was soon successful. Nor did Susan refuse to return with him.

It was from her lips that he heard the very little she knew of her cousin’s acquaintance with Lieutenant Mason, and when she spoke simply but affectionately of her continual yearning to discover the retreat of this unhappy wanderer, he entered into her feelings and counseled her with a friendly kindness for which she was very grateful.

When Florence recovered her senses it was to find Miss Denham watching over her and shielding her from Mrs. Blunden’s well-meant but noisy demonstrations of affection. It was Susan who comforted her when she wept bitterly over the necessity of the separation she had herself decreed—comforting her with a hope to which, vague as it was, Florence fondly clung: that her innocence might yet be sufficiently proved to permit of Frank’s recall.

Not that he was far off. Although Mrs. Blunden had banished him from the house, he hovered around it continually; and Florence, when able to leave her bed for a couch near the window of the adjoining room, saw him sometimes, and gathered fresh consolation from his steady refusal to accept his dismissal.

On the other hand, however, Mrs. Blunden—all her ambition reviving that her niece should marry well—only waited the physician’s consent to carry her to new scenes and livelier society, where she fancied Mr. Aylwinne would soon be forgotten; and Florence, weak and depressed, was no longer in a condition to offer any strenuous opposition to her Aunt Margaret’s plans.

Her nervous horror of hearing them discussed made her dread Mrs. Blunden’s approach; and one afternoon, when Susan had gone out for a walk and she heard the rustle of a silk dress in the apartment, she closed her eyes, in the hope that her aunt would think she slept, and so withdraw.

But the step came nearer, paused beside the sofa on which she reclined, and a light, firm touch was laid on her thin fingers.

“Miss Heriton!”

She started up at the sound of that voice. A lady, richly dressed, stood beside her, and, throwing back her veil, answered the startled Florence’s cry of recognition with a slight smile.

“Not Julia Denham now, nor Julia Mason, the deserted wife; but Madame la Comtesse Morauville, à votre service.”

“I cannot understand,” said Florence confusedly. “Have you seen your cousin?”

Julia dropped the veil over her face and looked round uneasily.

“No, nor do I wish to see her. I could not bear—that is, our paths in life are different, and she would not think as I do—we never agreed. I am here to serve you, Miss Heriton, not to see Susan.”

“Me!”

“Yes, and myself. I have comprehended enough from an advertisement addressed to me to know that my presence was necessary here. The rest has been explained by Mr. Aylwinne, your friend.”

Florence, with rising color, now gazed at her eagerly.

Julia smiled reassuringly.

“Poor child! It was hard that your happiness should suffer! See, here are two of the letters I had from my worthless husband, and here the certificate of the marriage it suited him to deny, and here are your father’s notes imploring the return of the money intrusted to him. Take them all, Miss Heriton, and may they restore your felicity. Bid Susan clear the brand from my name, and—Heaven bless you both!”

She would have turned away directly, but Florence held her dress.

“No, Julia, do not leave us thus! Tell me, are you happy? And why have you concealed yourself so long from your friends?”

“Do not try to detain me. I cannot see Susan. I am content at present; but I could not remain so if she pleaded with me to forego my present calling. If she asks you what I said concerning myself, tell her that I left England to obtain those papers, and that I went to California on a twofold errand: partly to fulfill a mission intrusted to me by the French police, in whose service I enlisted myself—partly to trace Lieutenant Mason. I was successful in both. None dare point at me now as nameless and degraded!”

“But, Julia—forgive me—surely you are not——”

“Not what? A paid servant of France? A spy of the police? Bah! They have enriched me—they use me well—my honor is unimpeachable, and why should not I, who owe the misery of a blighted life to man’s villainy, retaliate now the means are in my power?”

Florence would have argued, pleaded, entreated; but Julia had come prepared to steel herself against such solicitations. She had been forced, she said, in hard, reckless tones, into the course she was now pursuing—forced by the desertion of the husband she had loved with all the intensity of her passionate nature, and she lived now only for herself. Then, hurriedly repeating her adieus, she extricated herself from the invalid’s feeble hold, and departed.

Susan Denham afterward made repeated attempts to see her, or draw her into a correspondence, but in vain. Through a friend of Mr. Aylwinne it transpired that she married a wealthy Parisian financier, and became famous in the fashionable world for her brilliant entertainments. She thus secured the riches and distinction which were the dream of her girlish vanity; but whether she found in such things the happiness she had then anticipated her friends in England never knew.

For some time after Julia left her, Florence sat with the letters lying on her lap untouched. Her womanly interest in the fate of her visitor made her forgetful for a while of her own. But by and by an arm stole gently around her, and she turned to find herself in the embrace of the much-tried Frank Aylwinne.

She held the letters toward him, but he would not look at them. He held her in his arms, and in her smile and joyous welcome he saw the harbingers of the happiness he once more hoped would be his.

How Mrs. Blunden scolded, and protested that she would never, never consent to a renewal of the engagement we need not repeat; for, before she had discovered the audacious intruder, he had won from the blushing Florence a promise to be his as soon as Mr. Lumley could come to perform the nuptial rite.

When Aunt Margaret had exhausted her invectives, it was easy to conciliate her, and within a fortnight of Julia’s strange visit Mr. Aylwinne and his bride left England for the south of France, where Florence soon recovered her health, or only retained sufficient traces of her late illness to make the tender assiduities of her husband very delightful.

Susan Denham went to Orwell Court, after all, to take charge of Walter and Fred. Her regret for her cousin only made her more gentle and thoughtful for others; and the boys, though awed at first by her gravity, soon learned to regard her as second only to the Donna.

Nor were they alone in discovering Susan’s excellent qualities, for when Florence and Frank came back to Orwell Court, Mr. Lumley confided to his old college friend the attachment he had formed for Miss Denham, who did not prove insensible to the good vicar’s suit.

But it was not at Orwell Court, dearly though she loved it, that Florence was destined to spend her married life. Mr. Aylwinne had been for some months negotiating for the purchase of Heriton Priory, and the title deeds of the estate were his gift to his bride on the first anniversary of their wedding day.

On the banks of the Coquet, where Florence spent her own sunny girlhood, her children will sport and play; and the sobering recollections of the troubled years spent since she quitted those lovely scenes have chastened the joy of returning to it the fondly loved and contented wife of Frank Dormer.

THE END.

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Table of Contents

In Love’s Hands

A Familiar Sight The World Over

BERTHA CLAY LIBRARY

IN LOVE’S HANDS;

HAND BOOKS

Twenty Books Every Woman Should Read

IN LOVE’S HANDS.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE GREATEST AMERICAN AUTHORESS

BEST COPYRIGHTS

Transcriber’s Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE