first recommended her, and if she pleases you she will have one friend in England at all events."

"She will be so much richer than I, then, for I am going back to find no one who ever was anything to me in my old life."

66

"Surely, ma'am," said Mrs. Simcox, you are putting a hard duty on yourself; for you are well liked here."

"It makes no difference to me where I am now," said Mary; "and it was Mr. Pemberton's decided wish. It will be better for Miss Pemberton in every way."

"You will let me know sometimes how you get on, ma'am, won't you?" asked Mrs. Simcox, cheerfully. "I shall want to hear of you very much."

"I wish you could come with me too. You have friends and relations in England. Why did you remain here after your husband died?"

"Because I had to work for my living, my dear, good lady. There's many a thing that looks strange may be explained in that way. And the people at home would not have wanted me as things were with me. For money was scarce with themall, on both sides, on my husband's as well as on mine. I daresay you will be surprised, ma'am, to hear that my husband was a gentleman."

"Not at all, Mrs. Simcox. Why should I be surprised?"

"Because I'm not a lady, and you might wonder at him for marrying me. He was a gentleman, though, born and bred, and educated for a doctor, in Dublin; and I was only a small tradesman's daughter. They think a deal in Ireland about such things, and when he made up his mind to marry me, he made it up to leave Ireland. I learned a great deal from him, while he was spared to me; and when he was taken, I could see no better way of providing for myself than turning sick nurse. The friends he had made helped me, and I got on. I shall never see Ireland again, nor trouble either his people or my own."

"Were his family unkind to you?"

"They were neither kind nor unkind. I never saw any of them except my husband's youngest brother, a wild young fellow he was, and he came to us one time when he got into a scrape at home. It was not long before we left Ireland, and I think he would have come with us readily enough then, but his family were putting him up for the army, and so he stayed; and he's a captain now, I believe, and the only one of

them that knows or wants to know anything about me. I let him know what I was doing out here, because he was a goodhearted boy enough, and he would have been uneasy to think I was altogether lost when his brother died; but I told him he needn't tell unless he was asked, and I darésay nobody ever asked him from that hour to this."

"What a frightful thing it is," said Mary, after a pause, "to think of the number of friendless people there are in the world."

"And how few think of it," said Mrs. Simcox. "People who have money for themselves seem to think money grows wild in the fields; and people who have friends to do everything for them, seem to think that friends perch on the branches like birds, for everybody in the world. There's nothing like having had to look for both, to make you see where help is needed."

"I think you have learned the lesson well," said Mary, gently, "and I am so glad you have given me a chance of helping you with this poor Bessy West. I feel quite rested now, and able to see her."

Bessy West was summoned. She was a handsome young woman, with a composed manner, and a reserved, rather sad expression of face.

Mrs. Pemberton received her kindly, asked her a few general questions, and dismissed her.

"She is very pretty and very nice," was Mary's commentary when Bessy West had left the room.

"Yes, she is all that, ma'am; and it is a thousand pities she should have got into such hands."

"If she proves to be only as good and lovable as she looks, perhaps we may be able to make up to her for a great deal."

"I should be hard to please if I did not like her," said Bessy West, in reply to a question from Mrs. Simcox, as they sat working in Mrs. Pemberton's room on the same evening; "for she is a kind, good woman. No one, who wasn't kind and good, would have taken me as she has done, knowing all about me. You told her everything?"

"Everything, except the name, as we agreed upon; and she thinks it quite right it should not be told. You will begin again, my dear, with her, and have a quiet, peaceful life of it; at least, it will be your own fault if you do not."

"Do you think she will live in the country, in England?"

"She says so; and, no doubt, she will for some time."

“Miss Pemberton will be no friend of

mine."

"But you will have nothing to do with Miss Pemberton; and you may be quite sure nobody will be allowed to interfere

friend, but, indeed, a natural enemy, who had induced her husband to do an unjust act towards his daughter; and who had, besides, an ugly incident in her past life, which Mr. Dale knew, and his knowledge of which rendered him an object of dislike to Mary. She had not denied it, she had not attempted to explain it, when Ida told her almost as much, and

sides, Miss Pemberton will get married in no time, in England, among her own people; and you may make a home for all your days, so far as I can see."

"But you'll give me the letters, all the same?"

"Oh yes; you shall have the letters." Presently Mrs. Simcox went away, to look after Mary; and the new member of the household remained alone in her mistress's room, thinking over her new position, while she plied her needle with the mechanical quickness of old habit.

"And so it is all settled," she thought, "and I am getting away to a new lifebut carrying a chain, too. And how am I to know if ever it is broken, and I have my real liberty again?"

An answer to this question was seemingly difficult to find. Bessy West had not found one when Mrs. Simcox returned, in a mood at once bustling and serious.

On the following morning John Pemberton's widow was the mother of a son, and had realised the very bitterest pang of loneliness which a woman's heart can feel, but, also, the first taste of the consolation which it has to reveal.

Ida Pemberton did not feel, or affect much interest in the little red, blinking, gaping creature who was presented to her as her brother. But she was attentive and kind to her step-mother, so that, to outward appearance, ace, the breach between them was healed. Mrs. Pemberton, whose whole heart was set upon the child who had come to remove from her that most awful of the various sufferings of bereavement-the difficulty of believing . that the lost love and happiness were ever real and whose physical weakness made her languidly quiescent, rested in the assurance that she had done what she could, and surrendered herself to the inability to think further about the trouble between them.

Ida's change of conduct towards her stepmother arose merely from a kindly natural impulse. She believed, as firmly as ever, that she had been mistaken in her estimate of her father's wife that she was no true

the secret; and what could anyone think of that? Ida was too innocent to associate with such a belief any suspicion of a nature such as might have occurred to a woman, or a girl "of the world;" she did not interrogate her mind on the subject at all, she merely yielded to an influence gained over her through her girlish vanity, and to a prejudice cunningly implanted.

Mrs. Simcox was not slow to perceive that things were better than they had been, between Mrs. Pemberton and her step-daughter; and, not possessing the slightest clue to the truth, she concluded that Ida had merely felt herself neglected, and, perhaps, been a little jealous in anticipation of an event, of which, when it occurred, she was glad.

One day, as Ida was paying Dick a visit in his loose box, and administering to him his daily treat of bread and lumpsugar, a boy who was employed about the yard brought her a card, with a name written in pencil on it:

"Mr. Geoffrey Dale."

"Where did you get this?" she asked the boy. He explained that he had met a gentleman near the garden, who had given him the card.

"He knew you were at the stables, miss," said the boy, "and says could he see you for a few minutes?"

Much disturbed, Ida went out of the yard and took her way to the gardens. Why did he come? Having done so, why did he give his visit this half-clandestine air? What was she to do? She knew quite well that Mrs. Pemberton would not have received him, and, angry though the knowledge made her, Ida's sense of honour told her she would have no right to invite him into the house; still less, said the same sense to her, to see and speak with him out of it. With all that, too, she could neither deny nor control the gladness with which the news of his coming had inspired her. How different everything seemed all in a minute! And so, full of these contradictory thoughts, she walked on quickly,

Dale.

Ida Pemberton had probably never looked so pretty in her life as she looked when she put out her hand, shyly, yet with unmistakable, if embarrassed, welcome, and said she was "very glad, she had no idea"-and broke down in her sentence with an enchanting smile and blush.

"You must wonder that I have come here, where I have such good reason to know that I am not welcome." Such were Mr. Dale's first words, delivered in a serious, even slightly tragic accent. "But," he continued, "I could not make up my mind to leave the colony without an effort to see you." He looked around him with an air of regretful remembrance, and murmured something pathetic about the "heavy change" since he had last seen the place; which, from his manner of reference to it, might have been familiar to him from his boyhood. He was handsome, daring, and insinuating; the girl to whom he spoke was very young and inexperienced, and he had drawn her into a confidence that had been maintained, by the dangerous medium of pen and ink, for several months. Is it very wonderful, or quite reprehensible, that Ida's heart should beat quickly, and her brown eyes look up at him with a shy trouble in them? that she should find it was easier to be "great friends" with Mr. Dale at a distance than thus face to face, when she found herself unaccountably with nothing to say?

"I ventured to come," resumed Geoffrey Dale, “that I might learn from your own lips an assurance that you will not deprive me of your friendship that we are not to be strangers-when you too go to England."

"I have not so many friends," said Ida, "that you should doubt."

The timid pleasure in her face and voice were naturally encouraging to the man who had gained so much influence over her during their brief association, and contrived so skilfully to strengthen it. Even the embarrassment from which she was suffering-for how was she to invite him to enter the house, or not to invite him? -looked like a delightful consciousness of his power over her.

"It is so long since I have heard from you," he said, "that I could not wait any longer for news of you. I felt I must brave everything, and see you."

His words had as much of question as of statement in them. They meant that

was to brave.

"I have not written lately," said Ida, and she walked on as she spoke, not in the direction of the house, "because there has been so much confusion and change here. Mrs. Pemberton has been ill. My little brother was born last week."

"Your little brother!" exclaimed Geoffrey Dale, with genuine astonishment. “I had no idea that such an event was expected."

"Oh yes; and, as soon as Mrs. Pemberton can undertake the voyage, we are going to England. I-I am afraid I cannot ask you to stay, because she has not left her room, and--"

"And because I should not be welcome to her under any circumstances. I knew that when I came here, and resorted to a kind of ruse for seeing you. Let me tell you the truth; I watched from the shelter of one of the trees in the avenue until I saw you come out of the verandah, and I guessed you were going to visit Dick. I never had any wish to see Mrs. Pemberton; but I resolved to come openly to your home to see you, just for once. I will not enter the house, but there can be no reason why we should not have a walk and talk together, such as the only person who had a right to dictate to you permitted in the dear old times."

He spoke gently and persuasively, and his eyes said more than his words. Ida remembered well Mary's positive assertion that her father had changed his opinion of Mr. Dale; but she set herself against the lesson of the remembrance.

"This happy event has made no change in the arrangements here, I conclude," he continued. "The sale of the place was completed, was it not?"

"Yes," said Ida, "that was all finished. Poor papa's will was made, and sent to England; but when he was dying, and they told him I was not to be his only child, he made another, and left everything to Mrs. Pemberton to do as she likes with it."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Dale, "that is very serious for you, and, I must say, a questionable proceeding on the part of the persons who induced him to do such a thing. It was tantamount to leaving you totally unprovided for; though, of course, he could not be expected to see that."

"But why?" said Ida, innocently. "Of course my little brother would have been the same as I was to my father if he had lived, and he would have had his share and I mine. It will be just the same now, won't it?"

"Not exactly. You must not look at the real world with the candid, generous eyes of your heart; you must see it as it is. The fact is, your father's will has made you dependent on Mrs. Pemberton."

"How?" asked Ida, with a flash of indignant pride in the look which she turned on him. "It is all my father'stherefore mine and my brother's. I shall never owe anything to her."

"Unfortunately you must, and cannot help yourself. Your father has given her everything, and who is to say what she will do with it?"

"I think," said Ida, "she will do what she knew poor papa would have wished. I do not love her as I once did; I could not, you know, since you told me she did not deserve the love and confidence which my father gave her; but I don't think she means to be unjust or unkind to me. Very little has been said between us, but I believe, if the baby were to die, she would carry out what was in my father's first will; and if he lives, he and I will be equal."

"And that will was sent to England?" "Yes; to papa's brother-in-law, Mr. Dwarris, of whom I told you. Is it not horrid to talk or think of such things," said Ida, shaking her head and smiling an uncertain smile; "it makes me feel years and years older, only to have to remember that there are such things as money, and rights, and interest. I never knew anything about them in my father's time. I never knew anything, except that I was happy, and that Dick had all he wanted." "Yes," assented Mr. Dale, musingly, "those were happy days, and careless times indeed. But they are over, and there is no use in blinding oneself to truths. One of these truths is, that it is not wise to offend her."

"What!"_said Ida, indignantly, "do you suppose I would be so mean

دو

"Not mean, only reasonable," said Mr. Dale. "You have been most unfairly treated, and if what I have said to you, of my knowledge of certain facts concerning Mrs. Pemberton required proof-I know it does not, I know you trust me, and hold me to be your friend--"

"Indeed, indeed I do."

"If it did-why, here is the proof. Mrs. Pemberton, who no doubt stands very high in Dr. Gray's good graces, induces your father, on his deathbed, not to make

an equable division of his property between you and her own expected child, but to put you absolutely in her power. She tells you he did this because he trusted her, and that is true; but I tell you his trust was misplaced. There is no help for that now, but you must act with prudence. You must keep friends with Mrs. Pemberton; and when you are in England, and have your uncle's protection and help to look to, she may be induced to make an honest arrangement of the property which would have been yours now, if your father's first will had been unrevoked. Is it not so?"

"I suppose-I believe so," answered Ida, who was both bewildered and disheartened by the turn the conversation was taking; the very last turn which she could have imagined, had her fancy forecast this unexpected interview.

"To that influence you must look. Now, tell me what do you know of this uncle and his family?"

"I know nothing, except that Mr. Dwarris was once much richer than he is now, that he has a son and a daughter, and that they live near a country town called Wrottesley. Poor papa was very anxious that I should be with my cousins, and should like them very much. He used frequently to talk about having my cousin Audrey to stay with us in London. But there will be nothing of that kind now; Mrs. Pemberton will not live in London. She has not said much about any plans for the future, but when she does talk of it, she says she will live near Wrottesley, on my account, that I may be with my own relatives."

"Well, that's for as much as it's worth, and as long as it lasts," said Mr. Dale slightingly. "Mrs. Pemberton's views may change in many respects. But she has the best of the position, and there is no good in disputing it. You must not make an enemy of her."

This was too much for Ida's young, untrained patience. How had she ever incurred Mary's displeasure, except by adhering to her friendship for the very man who was giving her this cold-blooded advice? Who and what but he caused the arising of the cloud between them? She could not blow it away now with a breath.

"I do not understand you," she said, pettishly. "How am I to avoid displeasing her, and at the same time keep my promise to you? If I were to tell Mary that you and I are no longer friends, that I had quite given you up, and would never write to you again, or know you if we met in England, she and I would be just as we used to be."

Mr. Dale's dark face was traversed by a very expressive look of rage, which, however, Ida did not see. She was walking by his side with her head down.

"Why," she continued, "did you not tell me all this in any of your letters? Ah! they were all about pleasanter things."

"Because you did not make the state of things plain to me."

"No," she answered, simply. "I suppose I did not. But now that it is clear to you, what do you want me to do?"

The girl's straightforward question caused Mr. Dale an amount of embarrassment which he very rarely felt. He could not answer it with candour equal to its own. Mary had gone too far in her surmise of the extent to which Ida had been tutored by her dangerous friend. Ida's simplicity had rendered her a less apt pupil than Mary supposed, and Mr. Dale's instructions had been merely general.

"What do you want me to do?" she repeated. "To take back the promise I made you, perhaps? No, thank you; not unless you are tired of it-not unless you have ceased to care that we should be friends. I should be little worth having for a friend, if I could do that only for my own interest's sake; and I certainly will

not."

Here Ida stopped abruptly, with her face a burning red, for there had flashed into her memory her step-mother's question, "Has he won your heart, poor child?" and with it a pang of shame and terror, lest she should be setting more store by the friendship he had asked for than he set by it, and lest her last incautious words had shown him that such was the case.

She was reassured, however, by the warmth and eagerness with which Mr. Dale protested against such an interpretation of his words. Had he not come to Mount Kiera Lodge to-day for the express

purpose of getting a renewed promise from her, and was not his sole anxiety for her and her future-so cruelly changed in its prospects?

He was dwelling upon this text with animation and persuasiveness which became him very well, and before which Ida's self-reproachful doubts melted away, when a single stroke of a bell sounded loudly from the direction of the house.

"That is a signal for me," said Ida; "they always call me in that way, when they know I am in the grounds. I suppose it is some caller whom Mrs. Pemberton wishes me to see."

"And that means that I must go," said Mr. Dale.

"I am afraid so. They-they will send to look for me, and perhaps though of course I shall tell Mrs. Pemberton——”

66

"No, no," said Dale, hastily ; you must not do so-not now, at least-not until we have met again and had our talk out, at all events."

He saw the doubt, even distress, in her face, and he added: "It would be very bad for her to tell her anything that might annoy her just now. You can do as you think best later. I will go no farther with you towards the house, but turn off at the stables. Meet me at the shrubberygate to-morrow at the same hour. I hear some one coming now. Good-bye."

He did not wait for her reply, but turned down a by-path which led to the stables. He was barely out of sight, and Ida had taken but a few steps in advance, when Bessy West came round the bend in the path, and, accosting Ida, said she had been sent to find her by Mrs. Pemberton, who required her to write a letter for despatch by that day's post..

Ida made answer, rather sullenly, "You can go back, and say I'm coming.

She did not quicken her pace, however, and as Bessy West obeyed her, that observant young woman made two mental notes. One was, that Miss Pemberton did not seem particularly ready to oblige her step-mother; the other was, that Miss Pemberton had "a nasty temper."