cautious as he was, said he could not undertake to recommend Miss Ponsonby to continue her journey.' 

 'And this was all?' exclaimed Louis, too intent on his own views for anything but relief. 

 'All? Is it not enough to set her free? She acquiesced in my judgment that she could do no otherwise than return. She wrote to her father, and I sent three lines to inform him that, under the circumstances, I fulfilled my promise to her mother by taking her home. I had nearly made her promise that, should we find you about to form an establishment of your own, she would consider herself as my child; but—' 

 'Oh, father! how shall we make her believe you care nothing for her scruple? The wretched man! But—oh! where is she?' 

 'It does not amount to a scruple in her case,' deliberately resumed the Earl.  'I always knew what Ponsonby was, and nothing from him could surprise me—even such an outrage on feeling and decency. Besides, he has effectually shut himself out of society, and degraded himself beyond the power of interfering with you. For the rest, Mary is already, in feeling, so entirely my child, that to have the right to call her so has always been my fondest wish. And, Louis, the months I have spent with her have not diminished my regard. My Mary! she will have a happier lot than her mother!' 

 The end of the speech rewarded Louis for the conflict by which he had kept himself still to listen to the beginning. Lord Ormersfield had pity on him, and went in search of Mary; while he, remembering former passages, felt that his father might be less startling and more persuasive, but began to understand what James must have suffered in committing his affairs to another. 

 The Earl found Mary in what had been her mother's sitting-room, striving to brace her resolution by recalling the conversation that had taken place there on a like occasion. But alas! how much more the heart had now to say! How much it felt as if the only shelter or rest in the desolate world was in the light of the blue eyes whose tender sunshine had been on her for one instant! 

 Yet she began firmly—'If you please, would you be so kind as to let me go to Aunt Melicent?' 

 'By-and-by, my dear, when you think fit.' 

 'Oh, then, at once, and without seeing any one, please!' 

 'Nay, Mary,' with 

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