after a moment, “that you saved my life; but, oh! child, you should not have tried to do it by sacrificing your own; and you would have done it on the steamer also. I shall never forget it of you, little one, you may be sure.”

He laid his hand gently on her head a moment, then turned and left them, to hide the tears that were welling to his own eyes.

“He has friends who doubtless are waiting for him,” Star 36said, jumping to conclusions, and as if to excuse herself for sacrificing so much, “while I have nobody since papa and mamma died.”

36

“But you are so young and”—so beautiful, he came near adding, but something in her earnest, uplifted eyes restrained him from speaking so familiarly, and he added, solemnly—“and it must be so hard to die with all the world before you.”

“Yes, if you have dear ones who love you,” Star returned, with a deep-drawn sigh.

A wistful look shot into the young man’s eyes at this.

“You have no parents, then?” he inquired, in tones of sympathy.

“No. Mamma died more than a year ago, and papa has been gone three months. I have no brothers or sisters, no home, only some distant relatives in America whom I have never seen. They promised papa to give me a home until my education is completed, when I intend to teach.”

“Was your home in England?”

“Yes, in Derbyshire. Papa was a clergyman in Chesterfield.”

“Was your home in Derbyshire?” Archibald Sherbrooke asked, with a slight start, while his face lighted.

“Yes; were you ever there?”

“Often.”

“Isn’t it a lovely country?” Star asked, eagerly, so glad to meet one who knew where her home had been. “Can you imagine anything more delightful than a drive or a canter across the Derbyshire moors?”

“No, indeed. I have often galloped over them,” he said, and then they fell to talking of other places that they knew; and when at last the dinner-bell rang, Star said, with sparkling eyes and cheeks in which the color was beginning to return:

“I am hungry—really, naturally hungry, and I feel ever so much better.”

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