'You did do it, however,' said the girl,—'but we will pass that. Everything is "much" to promise. And why I refuse, Mr. Rollo, is not the question. But it seems to me, that while my father might command me, on my allegiance, to give such a promise, no delegated authority of his can reach so far. I may find myself mistaken.'

'Do me justice,' he said. 'I did not command a promise; I sued for it. The protection the promise was to throw around you, I will secure in other ways if I must. But do not forget, Hazel, why I do it.'

'I do not believe you know,' said the girl excitedly. ' "Wild lilies?"—why, even wild elephants are not usually required to tie their own knots. What comes next? I should like to have the whole, if possible, before I get home—which seems likely to be about breakfast time.'

'Reo is driving as fast as he ought to drive, such a night. What do you mean by "what comes next"?'

'You said, I thought, you had several things to speak of.'

'I remember. I was going to ask you to go to see Gyda sometimes.'

'That is already disposed of—if I am to be allowed to go nowhere,' said Hazel, with a rush of pain which very nearly got into her voice. 'The next, Mr. Rollo?'

'I think, nothing next. You know,' he went on, speaking half lightly, and yet with a thread of tender persuasion in his voice, 'you know that next year you can dispose of me. Seeing that in the mean while you cannot help yourself, would it not be better to give me the assurance that for this year you will forego the waltz? and let things go on as they are? Field mice always make the best of circumstances.'

'All summer,' she answered, 'you have not even taken the trouble to forbid me! And now, forbidding will not do, but you must use threats. They might at least wait until I had disobeyed.'

'That is a very distant view of me indeed!' said Rollo. 'Details are lost. I will get you a lorgnette the next time I go anywhere.'

'You had better,' said Hazel, not stopping to weigh her words this time, 'for such distance does not lend enchantment.'— After which the silence on her part became rather profound.

'No,' said Rollo dryly, 'I see it does not. What will you do by and by, when you are sorry for having treated me so this evening?'

'I daresay I shall find out when the time comes.'—

She leaned her head back against the carriage, wanting dreadfully to get home, and put it down, and think. She could not think with her hand held fast in that fashion,—and she could not get it away, without making a fuss and so drawing attention to the fact that it was not in her own keeping. One or two slight efforts in that direction had been singularly fruitless. So she sat still, puzzling over questions which have perplexed older heads than hers. As, how you can have a thing given you, and yet not seem to possess it,—and why people cannot say words to give you pleasure, without at once adding others to give you pain. What had she done? Mr. Falkirk would have thought her a miracle of obedience these last two nights; she even wondered at herself. How she had enjoyed her home this summer! —it seemed to her that she loved every leaf upon every tree. What could he mean by 'remove'? And here a long, deep sigh so nearly escaped her lips, that she sat up again in sudden haste, erect as before; but feeling unmistakably lonely, and just a little bit forlorn.

Perhaps her companion's thoughts had come on one point near to hers; for he gently put the little white glove back upon her lap and left it there. His words went back to her last ones, though after a minute's interval.

'It will come,' he said confidently. 'All the field mice of my acquaintance are true and tender. When it comes, Hazel, will you do me justice?'

She stirred uneasily, and once or twice essayed to speak, and did not make it out. This way of taking things for granted, and on such made ground laying out railroads and running trains, was very confusing. Hazel felt as if the air were full of mistakes, and none of them within her reach. When at last she did speak, plainly she had laid hold of the easiest. The words came out abruptly, but in one of her sweet bird-like tones.

'Mr. Rollo—I am not the least imaginable bit like a field mouse!'

'In what respect?'

'These nice, tender people that you know'—she went on. 'I believe I am true.'

It might have been some pressure of the latter fact, that made her go on after a moments pause; catching her breath a little, as if to go on was very disagreeable, speaking quick and low; correcting herself here and there.

'I wish you would stop saying—all sorts of things, Mr. Rollo. Because they are not true. Some of them. And—I do not understand you. Sometimes. And I do not know what you mean by my doing you justice. Because—I always did—I think,—and I have not "treated you," at all, to-night.'

With which Hazel leaned head and hands down upon the window again, and looked out into the dark night. Would they ever get home?—But it was impossible to drive faster. A thick fog filled the air, and it was intensely dark.

'I have been telling you that I love you. That you do not quite understand. I am bound not to speak on the subject again for a whole year. But supposing that in the meantime you should come to the understanding of it,—and suppose you find out that I have given field mice a just character;—will you do me the justice to let me find it out? And in the meantime,—we shall be at Chickaree presently,—perhaps you will give me, in a day or two, the assurance I have begged of you, and not drive me to extremities.'

'Very well!' she said, raising her head again,—'if you will have it in that shape! But the worth of an insignificant thing depends a little upon the setting, and the setting of my refusal was much better than the setting of my compliance. There is no grace whatever about this. And take notice, sir, that if you had gone to "extremities," you would have driven yourself. I always have obeyed, and always should. But I give the promise!'—and her head went down again, and her eyes looked straight out into the fog.

He said 'Thank you!' earnestly, and he said no more. There is no doubt but he felt relieved; at the same time there is no doubt but Mr. Rollo was a mystified man. That her compliance had no grace about it was indeed manifest enough; the grace of her refusal was further to seek. He deposited the little lady of Chickaree at her own door with no more words than a 'good- night;' and went the rest of his way in the fog alone. And if Wych Hazel had suffered some annoyance that evening, her young guardian was not without his share of pain. It was rather sharp for a time, after he parted from her. Had the work of these weeks, and of his revealed guardianship, and of his exercise of office, driven her from him entirely? He looked into the question, as he drove home through the fog.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

DODGING.

It was no new thing for the young lady of Chickaree to come home late, and dismiss her attendants, and put herself to bed; neither was it uncommon for her to sleep over breakfast time in such cases, and take her coffee afterwards in Mrs. Bywank's room alone. But when the fog had cleared away, the morning after Mme. Lasalle's ball, and the sun was riding high, and still no signs of Miss Wych, then Mrs. Bywank went to her room. And the good housekeeper was much taken aback to find peasant dress and grey serge curled down together in a heap on the floor, and Miss Wych among them, asleep with her head in a chair. Perhaps that in itself was not so much; but the long eyelashes lay wet and heavy upon her cheek,—and Mrs. Bywank knew that token of old.

I am afraid some hard thoughts about Mr. Rollo disturbed her mind, as she stood there looking. What use had he made of his ticket to distress her darling?—she such a mere child, and he with his mature twenty-five years? But Mrs. Bywank did not dare to ask, even when the girl stirred and woke and rose up; though the ready flush, and the unready eyes, and the grave mouth, went to her very heart. She noted, too, that her young lady went into no graphic descriptions of the ball, as was her wont; but merely bade Phoebe take away the two fancy dresses, and ensconced herself in a maze of soft white folds, and then went and knelt down by the open window; leaning her elbows there, and her chin on her hands. Mrs. Bywank waited.

'Miss Wych,' she began after a while,—'my dear, you have had no breakfast.'

'I want none.'

'But you will have some lunch?'

'No.'

'My dear,—you must,' said Mrs. Bywank. 'You will be sick, Miss Wych.'

'Don't you say "must" to me, Byo!' said the girl impetuously. But then she started up and flung her arms round Mrs. Bywank and kissed her, and said, 'Come, let's have some lunch, then!'—giving half-a-dozen orders to Phoebe as she went along. But the minute lunch was over, Wych Hazel stepped into her carriage and drove away. Not the landau this time, through the September day was fair and soft; neither was the young lady arrayed in any wise for paying visits; her white cloud of morning muslin and lace, her broad gipsy hat, and gauntlets caught up and carried in her hand, not put on,—so she bestowed herself in the close carriage which generally she used only by night. And the low-spoken orders to Reo were, to take her a road she had never been, and drive till she told him to stop. Then she threw herself back against the cushions, and buried her face in hands, and tried to think.

If that was to leave her 'practically to Mr. Falkirk,' her knowledge of English was somewhat deficient. And if belonging to somebody merely 'in idea' had such results!—but she was shy of the 'idea,' blushing over it there all by herself as she pushed it away. She was disappointed, there was no doubt about that. Foiled of her plan, over which she had pleased herself; for she had intended to give a 'no' instead of a 'yes' at the right place in the charade, to the discomfiture of all parties;—curbed by a strong hand, which she never could bear; hurt and sorrowful that nobody would trust her with even the care of her own womanhood.

'I wonder what there is about me?' she cried to herself, with two or three indignant tears rushing up unbidden. 'As if I had not had a sharper lesson the other night than any he could give!'—No, quite that; the sharpest dated further back; but this would have been enough of itself. And what else was she to do or not do?—she took down her hands, and crossed them, and looked at them as she had done before the picture of the 'loss of all things.' These bonds did not feel like those; she did not like them, none the less;—and—she wondered what was his idea of close guardianship? And had he made any misstatements?—Reo drove on and on, till his practised eye saw that to get home by tea-time was all that was left, and then stopped and got permission to turn round.

But driving seemed to have become a sudden passion with Miss Wych. She kept herself out, somewhere, somehow, day after day; denied of course to all visitors, and of small avail to Mr. Falkirk, except to pour out his coffee. Miss Kennedy was in danger of creating a new excitement; being always out and yet never visible; for one entertainment after another went by, and brought only her excuses.

Either the driving fever cooled, however, or Wych Hazel found out at last that even thoughts may be troublesome company; for she began suddenly to surround herself with invited guests; and one or two to breakfast, and three to dinner, and six to tea, became the new order of things for Mr. Falkirk's delectation. Some favoured young ladies even stayed over night sometimes, and then they all went driving together. Mr. Falkirk frowned, and Mrs. Bywank smiled; and cards accumulated to a fearful extent in the hall basket at Chickaree.

Rollo among others had been discomfited, by finding the young lady invisible, or, what was the same thing for his purpose, visible to too many at once. This state of things lasted some time, but in the nature of things could not last for ever. There came a morning, when Mr. Falkirk was the only visitor at the Chickaree breakfast table, and just as Mr. Falkirk's coffee was poured out, Dingee announced his co-guardian.

Well—she knew it had to come; but she could have found in her heart to execute summary justice on Dingee for the announcement, nevertheless. Nobody saw her eyes,—and nobody could help seeing her cheeks; but all else that transpired was a very reserved:

'Good morning, Mr. Rollo. You are just in time to enliven Mr. Falkirk's breakfast, over which he ran some risk of going to sleep.'

Perhaps Mr. Rollo had a flashing question cross his mind, whether he had not missed something through lack of a hunter's patience the other night; but he was too much of a hunter to do anything but make the best of circumstances. He shook hands in precisely his usual manner; remarking that Mr. Falkirk had not had a ride of four miles; took his breakfast like a man who had; and only towards the close of breakfast suddenly turned to his hostess and asked, 'How does Jeannie Deans behave?'

Apparently Hazel's thoughts had not been held fast by the politics under discussion, for she had gone into a deep grave meditation.

'Jeannie Deans?' she said, with her face flushing all up again. 'Why—very well. The last time I rode her.'

'When was that?'

'Monday, I think, was the day of the week; but I suppose she would have behaved just as well if it had been Tuesday.'

'Then probably she would have no objection to Wednesday?'

'Other things being comfortable,' said Wych Hazel, still keeping her eyes to herself.

'Do you mean, that you and she are in such sympathy, that if she does not behave well you know the reason?'

'I never sympathize with anybody's ill-behaviour but my own,' said Hazel, 'if that is what you mean.'

'I meant,' said Rollo with perfect gravity, 'that perhaps she sympathized with yours?'

'It occurs to me in this connection—talking of behaviour,'— said Miss Kennedy, 'that I had a question to ask of you two gentlemen, which it may save time—and trouble— to state while you are both together. Are you attending to me, sir?' she asked, looking straight over at her other guardian now,—'or has your mind gone off to: "Grand Vizier certainly strangled"?'

'My mind never goes off when you begin to state questions, Miss Hazel; knowing that it will probably have work enough at home.'

'This one is extremely simple, sir. Why, when you both agreed that I should have neither saddle-horse nor pony for my own individual use, did you not tell me so at once? Instead of keeping me all summer in a state of hope deferred and disappointment in hand?'

'Shall I take the burden of explanation on myself, sir?' asked Rollo.

'If you like. It lies on you properly,' said Mr. Falkirk, in anything but an amiable voice.

'Then may I order up Jeannie for you?' Rollo went on with a smile, to Wych Hazel; 'and I will explain as we go along.'

'That is to say, there is no explanation, but just the one I had made out for myself. Mr. Falkirk, did I ever practise any underhand dealings with you?' she said.

'Don't begin to do it with me,' said Rollo. 'Suppose you put on your habit, and in half an hour we'll have it all out on the road.'

'Your respective ancestors must have been invaluable in the old Salem times,' said the young lady, arching her brows a little. 'In these days I think truth should win truth.' With which expression of opinion Miss Wych whistled for a fresh glass of water and dismissed the subject. Not without a smothered sigh, however.

'I did not understand,' said Rollo, 'that expression of respect for our ancestors.'

'Naturally. As I expressed none. But I remember—you belong across the sea; where witchcraft probably is unknown, and so is never dealt with.'

'What would you give as the best manner of dealing with it?' Rollo inquired with admirable command of countenance.

'I suppose I should let them go their way. But then, being one of the guild, I of course fail to see the danger; and cannot appreciate the mild form of fear which has shadowed Mr. Falkirk for ten years past, nor the sharper attack which has suddenly seized Mr. Rollo.' She could keep her face too, looking carelessly down and poising her teaspoon.

'What becomes of your kitten, when you are suddenly made aware that there are strange dogs about?' said Rollo again, eyeing her.

'My kitten, indeed!'—said Hazel, with just so much stir of her composure as recognized the look which yet she did not see. 'Did you ever hear of a dog's cajoling a cat, Mr. Rollo?'

'Did you never hear of puss in a corner?'

'Yes,' she said. 'You would not think it, but I am very good at that.'

'You are very good at something else,' said he smiling. 'Will you permit me to remind you, that I have not yet had the honour of an answer to my inquiry whether your witchship will ride this morning?'

If Mr. Falkirk had been away, it is not sure what she would have answered; but Hazel had no mind to draw out even silent comments from him. So she gave a hesitating answer that yet granted the appeal. Then wished the next moment she had not given it. Would she need most courage to take it back, or to go on?

'If you will excuse me, then, I will go and see to the horses. I leave you, Mr. Falkirk, to defend yourself! I have been unable to decoy the enemy.'

With which he went off. Mr. Falkirk's brows were drawn pretty close.

'Miss Hazel, I should like to be told, now that we are alone, in what way I have failed to meet "truth with truth"?'

'My dear sir, how you do scowl at me!' said Miss Hazel, retaking her easy manner, now that her enemy was away. 'I only used the word in a popular sense. If I never misled you, then you had no right to mislead me.'

'How were you misled, Miss Hazel?'

'I supposed, being somewhat simple-minded, that the reason horse, pony, and basket wagon did not appear, was that they could not be found, sir. It shews how ignorant I am of the world still, I must acknowledge.'

'I have no opinion of ponies and basket wagons,' said her guardian. 'And I do not know how well you can drive. And you are too young, Miss Hazel, and too—well, you are too young to be allowed to drive round the world by yourself. When Cinderella, no, when Quickear, sets off to seek her fortune, she goes fast enough in all nature without a pony.'

'There are just two little faults in your statement, sir, considered as an answer. I never was fast'—said Miss Hazel,— 'but trying to hoodwink me is not likely to make me slow,'—and she went off to don her habit and gather herself up for the ride.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A COTTON MILL.

As she came to the side door, she saw Rollo just dismounting from Jeannie Deans, and immediately preparing to remove his saddle and substitute the side-saddle; which he did with the care used on a former occasion. But Jeannie had raised her head and given a whinny of undoubted pleasure.

'Let her go, Mr. Rollo,' whispered Lewis.

And so released, the little brown steed set off at once, walking straight to the verandah steps, pausing there and looking up to watch Hazel, renewing her greeting in lower tones, as if this were private and confidential. Hazel ran down the steps, and made her fingers busy with bridle and mane, giving furtive caresses. Only when she was mounted, and Rollo had turned, his ear caught the sound of one or two little soft whispers that were meant for Jeannie's ears alone.

Perhaps the gentleman wanted to give Wych Hazel's thoughts a convenient diversion; perhaps he wished to get upon some safe common ground of interest and intercourse; perhaps he purposed to wear off any awkwardness that might embarrass their mutual good understanding; for he prefaced the ride with a series of instructions in horsemanship. Mr. Falkirk had never let his ward practise leaping; Rollo knew that; but now, and with Mr. Falkirk looking on, he ordered up the two grooms with a bar, and gave Wych Hazel a lively time for half an hour. A good solid riding lesson, too; and probably for that space of time at least attained all his ends. But when he himself was mounted, and they had set off upon a quiet descent of the Chickaree hill, out of sight of Mr. Falkirk, all Wych Hazel's shyness came back again; hiding itself behind reserve. Rollo was in rather a gay mood.

'It is good practice,' he said. 'Did you ever go through a cotton mill?'

'Never.'

'How would you like to go through one to-day?'

'Why—I do not know. Very well, I daresay.'

So with this slight and doubtful encouragement, Rollo again took the way to Morton Hollow. It was early October now; the maples and hickories showing red and yellow; the air a wonderful compound of spicy sweetness and strength; the heaven over their heads mottled with filmy stretches of cloud, which seemed to float in the high ether quite at rest. A day for all sorts of things; good for exertion, and equally inviting one to be still and think.

'How happens it you have let Jeannie stand still so long?' Rollo asked presently.

'I have not wanted to ride her,—that is all.'

'Would you like her better if she were your own?' he said quite gently, though with a keen eye directed at Wych Hazel's face.

'No. Not now.' The 'now' slipped out by mistake, and might mean either of two things. Rollo did not feel sure what it meant.

'Did you ever notice,' he said after a few minutes again, 'how different the clouds of this season are from those of other times of the year? Look at those high bands of vapour lying along towards the south; they seem absolutely poised and still. Clouds in spring and summer are drifting, or flying, or dispersing, or gathering: earnest and purposeful; with work to do, and hurrying to do it. Look at those yonder; they are at rest, as if all the work of the year were done up. I think they say it is.'

The fair grave face was lifted, shewing uncertainty through the light veil; and she looked up intently at the sky, almost wondering to herself if there had been clouds in the spring and early summer. She hardly seemed to remember them.

'Is that what they say to you?' she said dreamily. 'They look to me as if they were just waiting,—waiting to see where the wind will rise.'

'But the wind does not rise in October. They will lie there, on the blessed blue, half the day. It looks to me like the rest after work.'

She glanced at him.

'I do not know much about work,' she said. 'What I suppose you would call work. It has not come into my hands.'

'It has not come into mine,' said Rollo. 'But can there be rest without work going before it?'

'Such stillness?' she said, looking up at the white flecks again. 'But according to that, we do not either of us know rest.'

'Well,' said he smiling, 'I do not. Do you?'

'I used to think I did. What do you mean by rest, Mr. Rollo?'

'Look at those lines of cloud. They tell. The repose of satisfied exertion; the happy looking back upon work done, after the call for work is over.'

She looked up, and kept looking up; but she did not speak. Somehow the new combinations of these last weeks had made her sober; she did not get used to them. The little wayward scraps of song had been silent, and the quick speeches did not come.

'But then,' Rollo went on again presently, 'then comes up another question. What is work? I mean, what is work for such people as you and I?'

'I suppose,' said Hazel, 'whatever we find to do.'

'I have not found anything. Have you? Those clouds somehow seem to speak reproach to me. May be that is their business.'

'I have not been looking,' said Hazel. 'You know I have been shut up until this summer. But I should think you might have found plenty,—going among people as you do.'

'What sort?'

'Different sorts, I suppose. At least if you are as good at making work for yourself in some cases as you are in others,' she said with a queer little recollective gleam in her face. 'Did it never occur to you that you might set the world straight—and persuade its orbit into being regular?'

'No,' said Rollo carelessly, 'I never undertake more than I can manage. Here is a good place for a run.'

They had come into the long level lane which led to Morton Hollow; and giving their horses the rein they swept through the October air in a flight which scorned the ground. When the banks of the lane began to grow higher and to close in upon the narrowing roadway, which also became crooked and irregular, they drew bridle again and returned to the earth.

'Don't you feel set straight now?' said Rollo.

'Thank you—no.'

'I am afraid you will give me some work to do, yet,' said he audaciously, and putting his hand out upon Wych Hazel's. 'Do not carry quite so loose a rein. Jeannie is sure, I believe, and you are fearless; but you should always let her know you are there.'

'Mr. Rollo—' said the girl hastily. Then she stopped.

'What?' said Rollo innocently, riding close alongside and looking her hard in the face. 'I am here.'

'Nothing.'

Then he changed his tone and said gently, 'What was it, Miss Hazel?'

'Something better unsaid.'

He was silent a minute, and went on gravely—

'You wanted to know why I interfered the other night as I did; and I promised, I believe, to explain it to you when I had an opportunity. I will, if you bid me; but I may do the people injustice, and I would rather you took the view of an unprejudiced person—Mr. Falkirk, for instance. But if you wish it, I will tell you myself.'

'No,' she said; 'I do not wish it.'

Rollo was quite as willing to let the matter drop; and in a few minutes more they were at the mill he had proposed to visit. There they dismounted, the horses were sent on to the bend in the valley, beyond the mills; and presenting a pass, Rollo and Wych Hazel were admitted into the building, where strangers rarely came. One of the men in authority was known to Mr. Rollo; he presented himself now, and with much civility ushered them through the works.

They made a slow progress of it; full of interest, because full of intelligent appreciation. Perhaps, in the abstract, one would not expect to find a gay young man of the world versed in the intricacies of a cotton mill; but however it were, Rollo had studied the subject, and was now bent on making Wych hazel understand all the beautiful details of the machinery and the curiosities of the manufacture. This was a new view of him to his companion. He took endless pains to make her familiar with the philosophy of the subject, as well as its history. Patient and gentle and evidently not in the least thinking of himself, his grey eyes were ever searching in Wych Hazel's face to see whether she comprehended and how she enjoyed what he was giving her. As to the relations between them, his manner all the while, as well as during the ride, was very much what it had been before the disclosure made by Mrs. Coles had sent Wych Hazel off on a tangent of alienation from him. Nothing could exceed the watch kept over her, or the care taken of her; and neither could make less demonstration. There was also the same quiet assumption of her, which had been in his manner for so long; that also was never officiously displayed, though never wanting when there was occasion. And now, in the mill, all these went along with that courtier-like deference of style, which paid her all the honour that manner could; yet it was the deference of one very near and not of one far off.

Wych Hazel for her part shewed abundant power of interest and of understanding, in their progress through the mill; quick to catch explanations, quick to see the beauty of some fine bit of machinery; but very quiet. Her eyes hardly ever rose to the level of his; her questions were a little more free to the conductor than to him. Even her words and smiles to the mill people seemed to wait for times when his back was turned, as if she were shy of in any wise displaying herself before him.

Their progress through the mill was delayed further by Rollo's interest in the operatives. A rather sad interest this had need to be. The men, and the women, employed as hands in the works, were lank and pale and haggard, or dark and coarse. Their faces were reserved and gloomy; eyes would not light up, even when spoken to; and Rollo tried the expedient pretty often. Yet the children were the worst. Little things, and others older, but all worn-looking, sadly pale, very hopeless, going back and forth at their work like so many parts of the inexorable machinery. Here Rollo now and then got a smile, that gleamed out as a rare thing in that atmosphere. On the whole, the outer air seemed strange and sweet to the two when they came out into it, and not more sweet than strange. Where they had been, surely the beauty, and the freedom, and the promise, of the pure oxygen and the blue heaven, were all shut out and denied and forgotten.

'There is work for somebody to do,' said Rollo thoughtfully, when the mill door was shut behind them.

The girl looked at him gravely, then away.

'Do all mill people look so?' she said. 'Or is it just Morton Hollow?'

'They do not all look so. At least I am told this is a very uncommon case for this country. Yet no doubt there are others, and it is not—"just Morton Hollow." Suppose, for the sake of argument, that all mill people look so; what deduction would you draw?'

'Well, that I should like to have the mills,' said Wych Hazel.

They walked slowly on through the Hollow. The place was still and empty; all the hands being in the mills; the buzz of machinery within, as they passed one, was almost the only sound abroad. The cottages were forlorn looking places; set anywhere, without reference to the consideration whether space for a garden ground was to be had. No such thing as a real garden could be seen. No flowers bloomed anywhere; no token of life's comfort or pleasure hung about the poor dwellings. Poverty and dirt and barrenness; those three facts struck the visitor's eye and heart. A certain degree of neatness and order indeed was enforced about the road and the outside of the houses; nothing to give the feeling of the sweet reality within. The only person they saw to speak to was a woman sitting at an open door crying. It would not have occurred to most people that she was one 'to speak to'; however, Rollo stepped a little out of the road to open communication with her. His companion followed, but the words were German.

'What is the matter?' she asked as they turned to go on their way.

'Do you remember the girl that came to Gyda's that day you were there? this is her mother. Truedchen, she says, has been sick for two weeks; very ill; she has just begun to sit up; and her father has driven her to mill work again this morning. The mother says she knows the girl will die.'

'Driven her to work!' said Hazel. 'What for?'

'Money. For her wages.'

'What nonsense!' said Hazel, knitting her brows. 'Why, I can pay that! Tell her so, please, will you? And tell her to send Truedchen down to Chickaree for Mrs. Bywank and me to cure her up. She will never get well here.'

Rollo gave a swift bright look at his companion, and then made three leaps up the bank to the cottage door. He came down again smiling, but there was a suspicious veiling of his sharp eyes.

'She will cry no more to-day,' he remarked to Wych Hazel. 'And now you have done some work.'

'Have I?'—with a half laugh. 'But instead of wanting to rest, I feel like doing some more. So you have made a mistake somewhere, Mr. Rollo.'

There came as she spoke, a buzz of other voices, issuing from another mill just before them; voices trained in the higher notes, and knowing little of the minor key. And forth from the opening door came a gay knot of people,—feathers and flowers and colours, with a black coat here and there; one of which made a short way to Miss Kennedy's side.

'Where have you been?' said Captain Lancaster, after a courteous recognition of Mr. Rollo. 'You have been driving us all to despair?'

'People that are driven to despair never go,' said Wych Hazel; 'so you are all safe.'

'And you are all yourself. That is plain. Why were you not at Fox Hill? But you are coming to Valley Garden to-morrow?'

'I think not. At least, I am sure not.'

'Then to the ball at Crocus?'

'No.'

'My dear Hazel!' and 'My dear Miss Kennedy!' now sounded from so many female voices in different keys of surprise and triumph, that for a minute or two the hum was indistinguishable. Questions came on the heels of one another incongruously. Then as the gentlemen fell together in a knot to discuss their horses, the tongues of the women had a little more liberty than was good for them.

'You have been riding, Hazel; where are your horses?'

'Where have you been?'

'O, you've been going over a mill! A cotton mill? Horrid! What is the fun of a cotton mill? what did you go there for?'

'What sort of a mill have you been over?' said Hazel.

'O, the silk mill. Such lovely colours, and cunning little silk-winders,—it's so funny! But where have you been all this age, Hazel? you have been nowhere.'

'I know what has happened,' said Josephine Powder, looking half vexed and half curious,—'you needn't tell me anything. When a lady sees almost nobody and goes riding with the rest, we know what that means. It's transparent.'

'I wouldn't conclude upon it, Hazel,' said another lady. 'A man that had got a habit of command by being one's guardian, you know, wouldn't leave it off easy. Would he, Mrs. Powder?'

'Are we to congratulate you, my dear?' asked the ex-Governor's lady, with a civil smile, and an eye to the answer.

'Really, ma'am, I see no present occasion?' said Hazel, with more truth than coolness.

'She sees no occasion!' cried Josephine. 'Well, I shouldn't either in her place.' (Which was a clear statement that grapes were sour.) 'Poor child! Are you chained up for good, Hazel?'

'Hush, Josephine?' said her mother, who was a well-bred woman; such women can have such daughters now-a-days. And she went on to invite Hazel to join a party that were going in the afternoon to visit a famous look-out height, called Beacon Hill. She begged Hazel to come for luncheon, and the excursion afterwards.

'Do say yes, please!' said Captain Lancaster, turning from the other group. 'You have said nothing but no for the last month.'

'Well, if being a negative means that one is not also a positive—' Hazel began.

'And then, oh Miss Kennedy,' broke in Molly Seaton, 'there's this new Englishman!—'

'A new Englishman!—'

'Yes,' said Molly, unconscious why the rest laughed, 'and he's seen you at church. And he has vowed he will not go home till he has seen you in the German.'

'Has he?' said Hazel. 'I hope he likes America.'

They gathered round her at that, in a breeze of laughter and entreaty, till her shy gravity gave way, and Mr. Rollo's ears were saluted by such a musical laugh as he had not heard for many a day.

'He'll be here presently,' said Molly. 'He's up in the mill with Kitty Fisher. So you can ask him yourself, Miss Kennedy.'

Rollo heard, and purposely held himself a little back, and continued a conversation he did not attend to; he would not be more of a spoil-sport then he could help.

'You'll come, won't you, Hazel?' said Josephine. 'I will be very good if you will come.'

Hazel balanced probabilities for one swift second.

'That is too large a promise, Phinny—I would not make it. But I will come, thank you, Mrs. Powder. Only not to luncheon. I will drive over this afternoon, and meet you at the hill.'

'Why, here is our dear Duchess!' cried Kitty Fisher, rushing up. 'And where is the—ahem!—Mr. Rollo, I am delighted to see you. Miss Kennedy, allow me to present Sir Henry Crafton.'

Wych Hazel bowed, and turning towards Mr. Rollo, remarked that if she was to come back, she must go. Rollo was also invited to Beacon Hill, but excused himself; and he and Wych Hazel left the others, to go forward to find their horses.

On the ride home he made himself particularly pleasant; talking about matters which he contrived to present in very entertaining fashion; ignoring the people and the insinuations they had left behind them in the Hollow, and drawing Wych Hazel, so far as he could, into a free meeting of him on neutral ground. They had another run through the lane; a good trot over the highway; and when they had entered the gate of Chickaree and were slowly mounting the hill, he spoke in another tone.

'Miss Hazel, don't you think you have done enough for to-day?'

'Made a good beginning.'

'Twenty-four miles on horseback—and a cotton mill! That is enough for one day, isn't it, for you?'

'Twenty-four, is it?' she said carelessly. 'Call it four, and my feeling will not contradict you.'

'Very well. I want your feeling to remain in the same healthy condition.'

'It always does.'

'Beacon Hill will not run away. Leave that for another time. It is a good day's work for you, that alone. Suppose we go there to-morrow?' said Rollo coolly, looking at his companion.

'Well—if I like it well enough to-day.'

Dane was silent, probably feeling that his duty as Miss Kennedy's guardian was in the way of doing him very frequent disservice. However he was not a man to be swayed by that consideration. He came close alongside of Jeannie Deans and looked hard in Wych Hazel's face as he spoke,

'Do you think Mr. Falkirk would be willing to have you go to- day?'

'Why, of course!'

'I think he would not. And I think he ought not.'

'Mr. Falkirk never interferes with my strength or my fatigue!—'

'I shall not ask him. I take the matter on my own responsibility.'

She had thrown her veil back for a minute, and leaving the bridle on Jeannie's neck, both little hands were busy with some wind-disturbed rings of hair. She put them down now and looked round at him,—a look of great beauty; the girlish questioning eyes too busy with him, for the moment, to be afraid. Could he mean that? was he really trying to head her off in every direction?

'Are you in earnest?' she said slowly.

His eyes went very deep into hers when they got the chance, carrying their own message too. He answered with a half smile,

'Thorough earnest.'

She drew back instantly, eyes and all; letting fall her veil and taking up her bridle. Except so, and by the sudden colour, giving no reply. She was learning her lesson fast, she thought, a little bitterly. Nevertheless, if people knew the exquisite grace there can be in submission, whether to authority or to circumstances it may be they would practise it oftener.

Not another word said Rollo. What was the use? She would understand him some day;—or she would not! in any case, words would not make it clear. Only when he took her down from her horse he asked, and that was with a smile too, and a good inquisition of the grey eyes, 'if he should come to take her to Beacon Hill to-morrow?'

'No,' she said quietly. 'I think not.'

'When will you have another riding lesson?'

'I do not know,' she said, with a tone that left the matter very doubtful.

'Well,' said he, 'you may go to Beacon Hill without me. But you must not try leaping. Remember that.'

He did not go in. He remounted and rode away.

CHAPTER XL.

SOMETHING NEW.

So Jeannie Deans went back into the stable, and carried her light burden no more for some time. But Hazel did not go to Beacon Hill, in any fashion nor on any day; and it is to be hoped Jeannie Deans was less restless than she.

'Miss Wych—my dear!' said Mrs. Bywank in remonstrance; 'if you cannot sit still, why don't you go out? You are just wearing yourself pale in the house; and why, I do not see.'

'Nobody sees—' said the girl with a long breath. 'My wings are clipped, Byo,—that is all.'

'My dear!' Mrs. Bywank said again. 'I think you shouldn't talk so, Miss Wych.'

'Very likely not,' said Hazel. But if ever I am a real runaway, Byo, it will be for the sake of choosing my own ruler. So you can remember.'

'Miss Wych—' Mrs. Bywank began, gravely. Hazel came and flung herself down on the floor, and laid her head on the old housekeeper's lap.

'O, I know!' she said. 'Why did they ever call me so, Byo? I think it hangs over me like a fate. Could they find no other name for their little brown baby but that? I can no more help being a witch, than I can help breathing.'

The old housekeeper stroked the young head tenderly, softly parting and smoothing down the hair.

'They liked the name, my dear,' she said. 'And so would you, if you could remember the tone in which Mrs. Kennedy used to say: "My Wych!"—"My little Wych!"—'

Hazel sprang away as if the words had been a flight of arrows.

And so the fall went on; and since Miss Kennedy would stay at home, perforce the world must come to see her there; and the old house at least sounded gay enough. And then society began slowly to steal away to winter quarters. The two young officers went back to their posts, without even a hope (it was said) that might make them ever return again to the neighbourhood of Chickaree. And Mr. May sailed for Europe, having a gentle dismissal from the little hands for which he cared so much; and the Powders departed to ex-official duties; and Mme. Lasalle to town. The leaves fell, having done their sweet summer duty far better than these rational creatures; and then Wych Hazel took to long early and late walks by herself, threading the leafless woods, and keeping out of roads and choosing by-paths; wandering and thinking—both—more than was good for her; and enjoying just one thing, the being alone.

Rollo all this while had kept the promise he made when he told her that he would see her and meant she should see him. He came very frequently; he rode with her if she would ride, and talked with her when she would talk; or he talked to Mr. Falkirk in her hearing. He sometimes gave her riding lessons. Whatever her mood, he was just himself; free, pleasant and watchful of her; sometimes a little Spanish in his treatment of her. Her clouds did not seem to put him in shadow. And she would not always refuse a lesson, or a ride, or a talk,—it was not in her nature to be ungraceful or rough in any way; only it could not be said that she took pleasure in them, as a certain thing. They broke up the intolerable loneliness of her life just then, but otherwise were not always a success. Constantly now expecting to be drawn back, or ordered back, as she phrased it; expecting forbidden things at every turn; she did not want to be alone with Mr. Rollo, nor to go with other people where he might come. In fact, she did not quite understand herself; and she grew more and more restless and eager to get away.

'Why should we not go on Monday?' she asked Mr. Falkirk.

'Go?' echoed her guardian. 'Are we to take up our travels again, my dear?'

'Did you suppose yourself settled for the winter, sir? I expect to go to town, like other people.'

'What are we to do when we get there?'

'Keep house, sir. You can take one-half the bricks, and I the other. Or any proportions that may suit your views,' said Miss Hazel compliantly.

Now Mr. Falkirk did not, it is true, understand the course things had taken for the last few weeks; he was only a man; and though Wych Hazel's guardian for many years might be supposed to hold a clue to her moods, this was what Mr. Falkirk failed to do in the present instance. But using his wits as well as he was able, he had come to the conclusion, not without some secret gratification, that Miss Hazel preferred the society of her old guardian to that of her new one. Certainly he was in no mind to cross her wish to go to the city, if she had such a wish. However, mindful of his duty, he mentioned her desire to Rollo, and asked if he had any objection to it. Rollo was silent a minute, and then gave a frank 'No.' And Mr. Falkirk wrote to make arrangements, and even went himself to perfect them. And he lost no time; by the end of October the change was made, and Wych Hazel established in a snug little house in one of the best streets on Murray Hill.

If Mr. Falkirk was misled before, his mind was not likely to clear up as the weeks went on. Whatever had come over his ward, she was unmistakably changed from her old self; as now, living in the house with her again, Mr. Falkirk could not fail to perceive. Quiet steps, a gentle voice that quite ignored its old bursts of singing; brown eyes that looked softly through things and people at something else; with a mood docile because it did not care: but that he did not know. Apparently she had not come to town for stir,—her going out was of the quietest kind. Sometimes a specially fine concert would tempt her; once in a while she made one of her radiant toilettes and went to a state dinner party, now and then to a lunch or a kettle-drum; but balls and evening parties of every sort were invariably declined. Instead, she plunged into study,—went at German as if her life depended on it, took up her Italian again, and began to perfect herself in French. Read history, knit her brows over science, and sat and drew by the hour.

Of course society could not quite be baffled so: mornings brought carriage after carriage, and evenings a run upon the door. Mr. Falkirk had little peace of his life, unless it were a reposeful thing for him to sit by and see the play.

Between whiles this winter, Hazel did a great deal of thinking: even German could not crowd it out. She knew, the minute she had said she would come to town, that she wished something could step in and keep her at Chickaree; or at least she knew that she was leaving more there than she had counted upon; and the knowledge chafed her. It was all very well to like—somebody—(name of course unknown)—to a certain degree; but when the liking made itself into bonds and ties and hindrances, then Miss Wych rebelled. She brought up all sorts of questions in the most unattractive shape, to find them suited with answers that could find no reply. It was simply unbearable, she urged upon herself, this being held in and watched and restricted,—very unbearable! Only, somehow, the person who did it all, was not. And the doubt whether life would be worth having, in such guardianship, started a more difficult point: what would it be worth without? And the mental efforts to shake herself into clear order, just seemed, as sometimes happens, to tie three knots where there was one before.

'It will go after a while,' she said, twisting herself about under the new form of loneliness and unrest which possessed her when she got to town. And it did: deeper in.

Mr. Falkirk, blind bat that he was (for a sharp-sighted man), was not discontented with his winter. He had Wych Hazel to himself, and she gave him no more trouble than he liked by the force of old associations. He watched the play in which she was so prominent and so pretty a figure, and found it amusing. It seemed safe play, so far; the fort that he was set to keep seemed quite secure from any attacks that presently threatened; and Mr. Falkirk had no suspicion that its safety was owing to a garrison within the walls. The outside he knew he watched well. It was a very quiet winter, indeed, except at such times as Miss Kennedy's doors were open to all comers; but Mr. Falkirk did not find fault with that. He had never been garrulous in his ward's company or in any other. Certainly he liked to hear her talk; and he knew that she talked far less than usual, when they were alone; but he argued with himself that Wych Hazel was growing older, was seriously engaging herself in study, after other than a school-girl's fashion; and that all this winter's development was but the sweet maturing of the fruit which in growing mature was losing somewhat of its liveliness of flavour.

They were alone one evening, rather past the middle of the winter. It was not one of Miss Kennedy's at-home nights; and in a snug little drawing-room the two were seated on opposite sides of the tea service. A fire of soft coal burning luxuriously; thick curtains drawn; warm-coloured paperhangings on the walls; silver bright in the gaslight, and Mr. Falkirk's evening papers ready at his hand. To-night Mr. Falkirk rather neglected them, and seemed to be in a meditative mood.

'Whereabouts are we in pursuit of our fortune, Miss Hazel?' he asked as he tasted his cup of hot tea.

'Rather deep down in Schiller and Dante, Sir.'

'Il Paradiso?' asked Mr. Falkirk meaningly.

'Pray do you call that "deep down"?' demanded Miss Hazel.

'I am merely inquiring where you are, my dear. I have heard of people's being over head and ears.'

'Only hearsay evidence, sir?' said Miss Hazel recklessly. But then she was not going to stand up and be shot at!

'I should like to know, merely as a satisfaction to my own mind, whether the quest is ended, Miss Hazel? Has Cinderella's glass slipper been fitted on? or has Quickear seized the singing bird and the golden water?'

'Princes are scarce!' said the girl derisively, but not without a rising blush.

'The true one not found yet, my dear?' said Mr. Falkirk with an amused glance across the table. 'What is to be our next move in search of him?'

'That is one way of putting it,' said Wych Hazel. 'I should think, sir, you had taken lessons of your devotee, Miss Fisher.'

'I am glad you don't,' said Mr. Falkirk earnestly. 'Miss Hazel, I should prefer that when such princesses are in the parlour, Cinderella should keep to her kitchen. It is the court end in such a case.'

Kitty Fisher's name brought up visions. Hazel was silent.

'Do you ever hear from Chickaree?' her guardian asked presently.

'No one to write, sir, but Mrs. Bywank,—and she, you know, is not a scribe. I understand that the kitten is well.'

'That is important,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'She hasn't told you lately anything about your friend Rollo?'

'No, sir. Have you given up your share in his friendship?' inquired Miss Hazel.

Mr. Falkirk made no answer to this query, and seemed to have forgotten it presently in his musings. Hazel glanced at him furtively, choosing her form of attack; for Mr. Falkirk's manner seemed to say that he had heard.

'You always played into each other's hands so delightfully, sir,' she began, with a very degage air,—'it is of course natural that he should keep you posted as to his own important proceedings. And a little ungrateful in you, Mr. Falkirk, I must say, to fling him off in this fashion.'

'I've nothing on my conscience respecting him,' said Mr. Falkirk, eating his toast with a contented air. 'I'm not his guardian, nor ever was.'

'What a pity!' said Wych Hazel. 'Both of us together might have made your life more lively than my unassisted efforts could do.'

Mr. Falkirk grunted, and went on with his tea; and sent his cup to be refilled.

Hazel pondered.

'You seem depressed, Mr. Falkirk,' she said. 'Shall I give you an additional lump of sugar?'

Now Mr. Falkirk in truth seemed anything but depressed; and he raised his head to look at his questioner.

'I am quite satisfied with things as they are, Miss Hazel.'

'Are you, sir? I am delighted!' said Hazel. 'But I never even supposed such a thing possible. How are "things"—if I may be allowed to inquire?'

Some things are new,' returned her guardian. 'And I should not be satisfied with them, if they concerned me. Which I take for granted they do not. I saw Dr. Arthur down town to-day; and he told me some odd news about Rollo.' Mr. Falkirk was finishing his tea in a leisurely way, evidently not thinking that the news, whatever it was, concerned either of them seriously.

'Why did you not bring Dr. Arthur home to tea?' inquired his ward.

'I did not think of it, Miss Hazel. But he volunteered a visit in the course of the evening.'

'That will be delightful,—I like Dr. Arthur,' said Hazel, feeling that somehow or other she must get a glimpse of his news before he came.

'Well, if what he said gave you so much pleasure, why don't you repeat it to me, Mr. Falkirk,' she ventured.

'I do not remember that I said anything gave me pleasure,' returned her guardian. 'This don't. By what he says, Rollo has lost his wits. I thought him a shrewd man of business; and he was that, when your affairs were in his hand last summer; but if what Dr. Arthur tells me is true, and it must be, he has done a very strange thing with his own fortune.'

'Dear me! I hope he did not hurt himself looking after mine!' said Wych Hazel innocently. 'Are fortune and wits both in peril, Mr. Falkirk?'

'Not yours, I hope,' said her guardian. 'I should be very uneasy if I thought that. I should have no power to interfere. The will gives him absolute control, supposing that he had control at all.'

Perhaps it was just as well that at this moment Dr. Arthur was announced. Alas, not only Dr. Arthur, but Mrs. Coles! And Hazel, giving greetings to one and welcome to the other; insisting that they should come to the tea table, late as it was; went on all the while looking after her own wits and picking up her energies with all speed. She had need; for the harmless-seeming eyes of Mrs. Coles were always to her neighbours' interests. Very graciously now they watched Wych Hazel.

There was a great deal to talk about, in Miss Kennedy's house and winter and engagements; and in Dr. Maryland's house, and Primrose, and her school. An endless succession of points of talk, that ought to have been very interesting, to judge by the spirit with which they were discussed. All the while, Wych Hazel was watching for something else; and Prudentia, was she keeping the best for the last? She was extremely affable; she enjoyed her tea; she took off her bonnet and displayed the pale bandeaux of hair which were inevitably associated in Miss Kennedy's mind with one particular day and conversation; she admired the furniture; she discoursed on the advantages of city life. Dr. Maryland was, perforce, rather silent.

'Well, Arthur dear,' she said at last, taking her bonnet, 'we must be going presently. What do you think of Dane, Mr. Falkirk?'

Mr. Falkirk did not answer intelligibly, though the lady's face was turned full upon him; he uttered an inexplicable sort of grunt, and knotted his eyebrows. He didn't like Prudentia.

'I never saw anybody so changed in all my life,' pursued the lady. 'Such sudden changes are doubtful things, I always think;—come probably from some sudden cause, and may not last. But it is very surprising while it does last.'

'I am sorry to contradict you, Prudens,' said Dr. Arthur here; 'but Dane was never more himself. He only happens to stand facing due north instead of north by east.'

'He was "north" enough before,' said his sister, a little, just a little bitterly; 'a trifle more of southern direction wouldn't have hurt him. But I think, he's out of his head. Men are, sometimes, you know,' she went on, looking full at Wych Hazel now. 'I shall let Miss Kennedy be judge. Do you know what Dane has been doing, Miss Kennedy?'

'Not waltzing?' said Hazel, opening her brown eyes with an expression of mild dismay which was very nearly too much for Dr. Arthur.

'Waltzing?' said Prudentia, mystified. 'I did not say anything about waltzing. Why shouldn't he waltz? I think he used. Why yes; he was a famous waltzer. Don't you waltz, Miss Kennedy?'

'But I was always known to be out of my head,' said Hazel. 'In what other possible way could Mr. Rollo shew the state of his?'

'I don't know what you mean,' said Prudentia, handling her bonnet. 'Then you haven't heard my story already. You know that old Mr. Morton has failed; did you hear of that?'

'Not the first time, is it?' said Miss Kennedy coolly. Dr. Arthur bit his lips.

'Yes, my dear! it's the first and only time; he was always supposed to be a very rich man. Well, Dane has taken his fortune and thrown it into those mills!'

'I was afraid you were going to say the mill stream,' said Wych Hazel, who was getting so nervous she didn't know what to do with herself; 'but the mills seem a safe place.'

'I don't know but he's better done that of the two,' said Prudentia. 'A safe place? Why, my dear, just think! he has bought all of Mr. Morton's right and title there; with Mr. Morton's three mills. Of course, it must have taken very nearly his whole fortune; it must.'

'I fancy there's a trifle left over,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'But I can't conceive what possessed him. What does Rollo know of the mill business?'

'Nothing at all, of course,' said Prudentia. 'Nor of any other business. And he has shewed his ignorance—did Arthur tell you, sir, how he has shewed it?'

'In buying three mills to begin with,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'A modest man would have begun with one.'

'But my dear sir, that isn't all. What do you suppose, Miss Kennedy, was his first move?'

'One is prepared for almost anything.'

'He will learn the business, before long,' said Dr. Arthur, 'if close attention can do it.'

'What should he learn the business for?' said his sister. 'He has already all that the mill business could give him, without any trouble. I think he's troubled in his wits; I do indeed. He was always a wild boy, and now he's a wilder man.'

'Troubled in his wits!' said Dr. Arthur, with such supreme derision, that Wych Hazel laughed. To her own great relief, be it said.

'But what is this that he has done?' Mr. Falkirk inquired, his brows looking very much disgusted.

'My dear sir! Fancy it. Fancy it, Miss Kennedy. The first thing he did was to raise the wages of his hands!'

Just one person caught the gleam from under Hazel's down-cast eyes,—perhaps something made his own quick-sighted. Dr. Arthur answered for her.

'They were not half paid before, Mr. Falkirk. That explains it.'

'Weren't they paid as other mill hands are paid, Dr. Arthur?'

'The more need for a change, then,' said the young man, who was a trifle Quixotic himself.

'But if the change is made by one man alone, he effects nothing but his own ruin.'

'That is what Dane is about, I am firmly persuaded,' said Mrs. Coles.

'No man ever yet went to ruin by doing right,' said Dr. Maryland.

'Many a one!' said Mr. Falkirk,—'by doing what he thought right; from John Brown up to John Huss, and from John Huss back to the time when history is lost in a fog bank.'

'They'll get their reward, I suppose, in the other world,' said Prudentia comfortably.

'How will his ruin affect the poor mill people?' said Wych Hazel, so seriously, that perhaps only Mr. Falkirk—knowing her— knew what she was about.

'Why, my dear, it ruins them too in the end; that's it. When he fails, of course his improvements fail, and everything goes back where it was before. Only worse.'

'Precisely,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'You cannot lift the world out of the grooves it runs in, by mere force; and he who tries, will put his shoulder out of joint.'

'Then my picture of "the loss of all things," is the portrait of a ruined man!' said Wych Hazel, with an expressive glance at Dr. Maryland. He smiled.

'It partly depends, you know, Miss Kennedy, upon where the race is supposed to end. But our friend is running well at present, for both worlds.'

'Arthur, he is not!' said his sister emphatically. 'Paul and John Charteris, the other mill-owners, hate him as hard as they can hate him; and if they can ruin him, they will; that you may depend upon.'

'And his own people love him as hard as they can,—so that, even if you allow one rich mill-owner to be worth a hundred poor employes, Dane can still strike a fair balance.'—Rather more than that, Dr. Arthur thought, as his quick eye took notice of the little screening hand that came suddenly up about Wych Hazel's mouth and chin.

'That's all nonsense, Arthur; business is business, and not sentiment. I never heard of a cotton mill yet that was run upon sentiment; nor did you. And I tell you, it won't pay. I am speaking of business as business. Paul and John Charteris will ruin Dane, if they can.'

'They probably can,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'They will make a combination with other mill-owners and undersell him; and paying less wages they can afford to do it, for a time. And a certain time will settle Rollo's business.'

'I think he has lost his wits,' Prudentia repeated, for the third or fourth utterance. 'Then another thing he has done—But really, Arthur, my dear, we must go.'

'O tell us some more!' said Miss Kennedy. 'We have not heard of any wits lost in this way, all winter; and it is quite exciting. What next, Mrs. Coles?'

Prudentia laughed.

'How comes it he don't tell you himself? I thought you used to be such friends—riding about everywhere. But indeed we don't see much of Dane now; he lives at his old nurse's ever so much of the time; and comes scouring over the country on that bay horse of his, to consult papa about something;—but I never see him, except through the window. Sometimes he rides your brown horse, I think, Miss Kennedy. I suppose he is keeping it in order for you.'

'Well, that certainly does sound erratic!' said Miss Kennedy, drawing a long breath. 'I hope he will confine all new-fangled notions to the bay.'

'He has taught that creature to stand still,' said Mrs. Coles, looking at her.

'That must afford him immense satisfaction! Rather hard upon the bay, though.'

'He stands as still as a mountain,' Prudentia went on, carrying on meanwhile privately a mental speculation about Wych Hazel;—'he stands like a glossy statue, without being held, too; and comes when Dane snaps his fingers to him.'

'It only shews what unexpected docility exists in some natures,' said Miss Kennedy with an unreadable face.

'Come, Prudens—tell your story and have done!' said Dr. Arthur, speaking now. 'I have an appointment.'

'I am quite ready,' said Mrs. Coles starting up. 'Dear me! we have stayed an unconscionable time, but Miss Kennedy will forgive us, being country people and going back to the country to-morrow. Prim says Dane is coming down before long.'

'Tell your story!'

'Miss Kennedy won't care for it, and it will ruin Dane with Mr. Falkirk. He has introduced something like English penny readings at Morton Hollow,' said Prudentia, putting on her bonnet and turning towards Wych Hazel's guardian.

'What are penny readings?' said Mr. Falkirk.

'They had their origin in England, I believe; somebody set them on foot for the benefice of the poorer classes, or work people; and Dane has imported them. He receives the employes of the mills,' said Prudentia, chuckling,—'whoever will come and pay a penny; his own workmen and the others. The levee is held on Saturday nights; and Dane lays himself out to amuse them with reading to them and singing. Fancy it! Fancy Dane reading all sorts of things to those audiences! and the evenings are so interesting, I am told, that they do not disperse till eleven o'clock. I believe he has it in contemplation to add the more material refreshment of sandwiches and coffee as soon as he gets his arrangements perfected. And he is going to build, as soon as the spring opens, O, I don't know what!'

'Fools build houses, and other people live in them,' said Mr. Falkirk.

'O, it's not houses to live in—though I have a notion he is going to do that too. He lives with old Gyda pretty much of the time.'

'Well,' said Dr. Arthur, looking at Mr. Falkirk but speaking to Wych Hazel, 'I need only add, that my father thoroughly approves of all Rollo's work.'

'Work?—does he call it "work"?' said Wych Hazel, looking up.

'It is not exactly play, Miss Kennedy!'—

But the soft laugh that answered that, no one could define.

'He won't find it play by the by,' said Mr. Falkirk.

CHAPTER XLI.

A LESSON.

This visit and talk gave Hazel a great deal to ponder. The work, and—the doer of it; and—did he ever think of her, she questioned, in the doing? And did he expect to make her 'stand, as he had the bay'? and come, if he but 'snapped his fingers'? On the whole, Miss Wych did not feel as if she were developing any hidden stores of docility at present!—not at present; and one or two new questions, or old ones in a new shape, began to fill her mind; inserting themselves between the leaves of her Schiller, peeping cunningly out from behind 'reason' and 'instinct' and 'the wings of birds'; dancing and glimmering and hiding in the firelight. Mr. Falkirk might have noticed, about this time, that Miss Wych was never ready to have the gas lit.

The gas was lit, however, and the tea-tray just brought in, when one evening a few nights after the visit last recorded, Rollo himself was announced. Notwithstanding all Mrs. Coles had prognosticated, he seemed very much like himself both in face and manner; he came in and talked and took his place at the table, just as he had been used to do at Chickaree. Not even more grave than he had often been there.

It was not the first time Wych Hazel had confessed to herself that tea trays are a great institution; nor the first time she had found shelter behind her occupation. Very demurely she poured out the tea, and listened sedately to the talk between the gentlemen; but it was with extra gravity that she at last put her fingers in. She never could guess afterwards how she had dared.

'Do you think he looks much like a ruined man, Mr. Falkirk?' she said, in one of the pauses of their talk.

A flash of lightning quickness and brightness came to her from Rollo's eyes. Mr. Falkirk lifted his dumbly, not knowing how to take the girl. He had not, so far in the talk, touched the subject of Mrs. Coles' communications, though no doubt they had not been out of his mind for one instant. But somehow, Mr. Falkirk had lacked inclination to call his younger coadjutor to account, and probably was hopeless of effecting any supposable good by so doing. Now he stared wonderingly up at Wych Hazel. She was looking straight at him, awaiting an answer; but fully alive to the situation, and a little bit frightened thereat, and with the fun and the confusion both getting into her face in an irresistible way. Mr. Falkirk's face went down again with a grunt, or a growl; it was rather dubious in intent. Rollo's eyes did not waver from their inquisition of Wych Hazel's face. It was getting to be hot work!—Hazel touched her hand bell, and turned away to give orders, and came back to her business; sending Mr. Falkirk a cup of tea that was simply scalding. Her bravery was done for that time.

'What have you been doing this winter?' Mr. Falkirk finally concluded to ask.

'Investing in new stock,' Rollo answered carelessly.

'Don't pay, does it?'

'I think it will. Money is worth what you can get out of it, you know.'

'Pray, if I may ask, what do you expect to get out of it in this way?'

'Large returns'—said Rollo very calmly.

'I don't see it,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'I hope you do; but I can't.'

'You have not the elements to make a perfect calculation.'

Rollo, it was plain, understood himself, and was in no confusion on the subject. Mr. Falkirk, either in uncertainty or in disgust, declined to pursue it. He finished his tea, and then, perhaps, feeling that he had no right to keep watch over his brother guardian, much to Wych Hazel's discomfiture, he took up his book and marched away.

Rollo left the table and came round then to a seat by her side.

'What have you been doing this winter?' he asked, putting the question with his eyes as well as with his words.

'Making old stock pay,'—said the girl, looking down at her folded hands; she was not of the calm sisterhood who hide themselves in crochet.

'Perhaps you will be so good as to enlarge upon that.'

Hazel sent back the first answer that came to her tongue, and the next: it was no part of her plan to have herself in the foreground.

'This is a fair average specimen of our tea-drinkings,' she said. 'And the mornings are hardly more eventful. Just lately, Mr. Falkirk has been a good deal disturbed about you. Or else he was easy about you, and disturbed about your doings,—he has such a confused way of putting things. But we heard you had copied my "hurricane track," ' said Miss Wych, folding her hands in a new position.

'And were you disturbed about my doings?'

'I? O no. I am never disturbed with what you do to anybody but me.'

Rollo did not choose to pursue that subject. He plunged into another.

'I should like to explain to you some of my doings; and I must go a roundabout way to do it. Miss Hazel, do you read the Bible much?'

'Much?' she said with a sudden look up. 'What do you call "much?" '

He smiled at her. 'Are you in the habit of studying it?'

'As I study other things I do not know?—Not often. Sometimes,' said Wych Hazel, thinking how often she had gone over that same ninety-first Psalm.

'What is your notion of religion?—as to what it means?'

She glanced up at him again, almost wondering for a moment if his wits were 'touched.' Then seeing his eyes were undoubtedly sane and grave, set her own wits to work.

'It means,' she answered slowly after a pause, 'to me, different things in different people. All sorts of contradictions, I believe!—In mamma, as they tell of her, it meant everything beautiful, and loving, and loveable, and tender. And it puts Dr. Maryland away off—up in the sky, I think. And it just blinds Prim, so that she cannot comprehend common mortals. And it seems to open Gyda's eyes, so that she does understand—like mamma. And—I do not know what it means in you, Mr. Rollo!'

'You never saw it in me.'

'No.'

'Let me give you a lesson to study,' said he. 'Something I have been studying lately a good deal. I must take this minute before we are interrupted. Have you got a Bible here?'

She sprang up and brought her own from the next room, with a certain quick way as if she were excited; Rollo took it and turned over the leaves, then placed it before her open.

'I have heard you read the Bible once. Read now those two verses.'

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again."—2 Cor. v. 14, 15.

Wych Hazel read the words slowly, softly,—then look[ed] up at him again.

'Is that what it means in you?' she said.

'What do the words imply, for anybody?' he said, with his eyes going down into hers as they did sometimes, like as if they would get at the yet unspoken thoughts. But hers fell again to the book.

'I suppose, they should mean—what they say,' she answered in the same slow fashion. 'But what that is,—or at least would be,—I do not very well know.'

'If One died for me,—if it is because of his love and death for me that I live at all,—to whom do I properly belong? myself, or him?'

'Well, and then?' she said, passing the question as answered.

'Then a good many things,' he said, smiling again. 'Suppose that he, to whom I belong, has work that he wants done,— suppose there are people he wants taken care of and helped,—if I love him and if I belong to him, what shall I like to do?'

'What you are doing, I suppose,' said Hazel, with a little undefined twinge that came much nearer jealousy than she guessed.

'That is very plain, and perfectly simple, isn't it?'

'It sounds so.'—And glancing furtively at the bright, clear face, she added to herself Dr. Maryland's old words: 'Love likes her bonds!'—That was plain too.

'Then another question. If I belong to this One whom I love, does not all that I have belong to him too?'

'But it was not I who said you were ruining yourself,' said the girl in her quick way. 'I liked it.'

'Did you?' said he, with one of his flashes of eye. 'But I am giving you a lesson to study. I am not justifying myself. Answer my question. Does not all I have belong to that One, who loves me and whom I love?'

She bowed her head in assent. Somehow the words hurt her.

'So that, whatever I do, I cannot be said to give him anything? It is all his already. I am asking you a business question. I want you to answer just as it appears to you.'

'How can it appear but in one way?' said Hazel. 'That must be true, of course.'

'Very well. That is clear. Now suppose further that my Lord has left me special directions about what he wants done to these people I spoke of—am I not to take the directions exactly as they stand, without clipping?'

'Yes.'

He put his hand upon the book which lay before her, and turned back the leaves to the third chapter of Luke; there indicated a verse and bade her read again.

' "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none." '

'What does that mean?' asked Rollo.

'What it says—if it means anything, I suppose.'

Again Rollo put his hand upon the leaves, turning further back still till he reached the book of Isaiah. And then he gave Wych Hazel these words to read:

'Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every joke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thine house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?'

'How are the commands to be met?' Rollo asked gravely when she had done.

'Why, you have found out!' said Hazel. 'I knew you would go off on a crusade after that October sky, Mr. Rollo.'

He seemed half to forget his subject, or to merge it, in a deep, thoughtful gaze at her for a few moments, over which a smile gradually broke.

'To come back to our lesson,' he said,—'are not these commands to be taken au pied de la lettre?'

'They can hardly be the one exception among commands, I should think,'—with a little arch of her eyebrows.

'Then I am bound, am I not, to undo every heavy burden that I can reach? to loose every bond of wickedness, and to break every yoke, and to remove oppression, in so far as it lies with me to do it? Do you not think so?'

'Why, yes!' said Wych Hazel. 'Does anybody like oppression?'

'Does anybody practise it?'

'I do not know, Mr. Rollo. O yes, of course, in some parts of the world. But I mean here. Yes,—those people used to look as if something kept them down,—and I used to think Mr. Morton might help it, I remember.'

'You are not to suppose that oppression is liked for its own sake. That is rarely the case, even in this world. It is for the sake of what it will bring, like other wrong things. But a question more. Can I do all I can, without giving and using all I have for it?'

'That is self-evident.'

'Then it only remains, how to use what I have to the best advantage.'

'Well, even Mr. Falkirk admits you are a good business man,' said Hazel, laughing a little.

'How are you for a business woman?'

'Nobody has ever found out. Of course I consider myself capable of anything. But then business never does come into my hands, you know.'

'This business does.'

'Does it? the business of caring for other people?—Last summer Dr. Maryland read a terrible text about the "tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter." It haunted me for a while. But I could do nothing. No,—one must have more right of way than I have—yet.'

'I do not mean the business simply of caring for other people. I mean the whole course of action, beginning from those first words you read.'

'You know,' she said quietly, 'I have never tried.'

'Will you study the lesson I have set you?'

'The one you have been learning?'

'Yes. The one contained in these verses you have read. Shall I do harm if I mark this book?'

'No.'—The word came quick, under breath.

He turned to the different places where she had been reading, and carefully marked the passages; then sought out and likewise marked several others. 'Will you study the lesson out?' he asked as he was busy with the last marking.

'I will try—I think,' she answered slowly. 'As well as I know how.'

'Do not fancy,' he said, smiling as he shut the book, 'that the care of the needy, in any shape, is religion; nor think that He who loves us will take anything as a substitute for our whole-hearted love to him. If we give him that, he will let us know in what way we may shew it.'

She made no answer except by another swift look. This was Chaldee to her! He let the silence last a little while.

'Now I have asked you so many questions,' he said, 'I should like it if you would ask me a few.'

'What about?'

'All subjects are open to you!'

'How did you contrive to make the bay "stand"?'

The flash of Rollo's eye came first.

'How do you know I did?' he said laughing. 'But that is no answer. Let me see. I believe, first I made him know that he must mind me; and secondly, I persuaded him into loving me. All that remained, was to let him understand that I wanted him to be immovable when I was not on his back.'

'O, but!—' said Hazel hastily,—the sentence ending in crimson cheeks, and the shyest veil of reserve dropped over her face.

'I might question here,' said Rollo in an amused tone, and eyeing her inquisitively; 'but I have done it so often,—I leave the ground to you. What next?'

'What next' seemed to have flown away.

'Does Collingwood engross all the thoughts that go back to Chickaree?'

A sidelong glance of the brown eyes was all that Mr. Rollo got by that venture.

How is Truedchen?' she asked gravely.

'Flourishing. Asks after you whenever she gets a chance.'

'Mrs. Boerresen of course is well, as she has had you to look after?'

'Gyda is happy. It is a comfort to her to have to make fladbrod for two.'

'It must be a comfort to you to eat it!—How is poor Mr. Morton? I felt for him when I heard you had turned his world upside down.'

'What did you feel for him?' said Rollo quite innocently.

'You have asked all your questions. I think it would be proper now,' said Wych Hazel, folding her hands and controlling the curling lips, 'that you should go on and tell me all there is to be told, and save me the trouble of asking any more.'

'I do not wish to save you the trouble.'

'It is good practice occasionally to do what you do not wish. Instructive. And full of suggestion.'

'Suggestion of what?'

'Try, and you will know. I doubt if you ever did try,' said Wych Hazel.

'I tried it last night and yesterday morning, when I was turned away from your door with the announcement that you were out.'

'But you did not leave your name!' said Hazel, looking up.

'I found it "suggestive" too,' Rollo went on. 'I do not know whether you would like me to tell you all the things which it suggested.'

'How is everybody else at home?' said Hazel, changing her ground. 'I heard Miss May had been sick.'

The answer tarried, for Mr. Falkirk came in, and perhaps Rollo forgot it, or knew that Wych Hazel had; for it was never given. He entered into talk with Mr. Falkirk; and did his part well through the rest of the evening. Then, Mr. Falkirk expressing the surmise, it was hardly put in the form of a hope, that they would see him to breakfast or dinner, Rollo averred that he was going immediately home. He had done his work in town, and could not tarry. No remark from the lady of the house met that. Indeed she had been sitting in the silentest of moods, letting the gentlemen talk; having enough to think of and observe. For absence does change, even an intimate friend, and both lifts and drops a veil. Old characteristics stand out with new clearness; old graces of mind or manner strike one afresh; but the old familiarity which once in a sort took possession of all this, is now withdrawn a little,—we stand off and look. And so, secretly, modestly, shyly, Wych Hazel studied her young guardian that night. But when he had risen to go, the faintest little touch from one of her finger tips drew him a step aside.

'I said I would study that,' she began. 'But it seems to me you explained it all as you went along. What is there left to study?'

The grave penetrating eyes she met and had to meet once, gave all the needed force to his answer.—'Your part, Miss Hazel.' He stood looking at her a minute; and then he went away.

If when Rollo had entered he room where she was, that evening, the instant feeling had been that he must come often: perhaps the after feeling was that he could not stand much of this doubtful and neutral intercourse. For he did as he had promised; left her, practically, to Mr. Falkirk, and came not to town again during all the rest of that winter.

CHAPTER XLII.

STUDY.

It seemed to Hazel, that in these days there was no end to the thinking she had to do; and if Mr. Rollo had only known, she remarked to herself, he need not have been at the trouble to point out new lines of study. The mere sight of him for two hours had put her head in a tangle that it would take her a month to clear away. Some of the questions indeed had started up under the conversation of Mrs. Coles; but with them now came others, all wrapped round and twisted in; and instead of dreamily watching the fire in her twilight musings, she began now to spend them with her cheek on her book, or her head dropped on her hands, an impatient little sigh now and then bearing witness to the depth of the difficulties in which she was plunged. What was foremost among the subjects of her musings?—perhaps this strange new talk of Mr. Rollo's, with the whole new world of work and interest and consecration which had opened before him. It made her sober,—it brought back the old lonely feelings which of late (since she knew herself to belong to somebody 'in idea') had somewhat passed out of sight. He was beginning a new, glad life; growing wiser and better than she; making himself a blessing, whereas she was only a care. What could she do for him any more?—would he even want her any more? given up now to these new ways of which she knew nothing, and in which somebody else might suit him better—say Primrose? But at that, Miss Wych started up and stirred the fire energetically, and then came back to her musings.

What did she care, anyhow? She passed that question, turned it round, and took it up in another shape. How would she bear to be all her life under orders? in 'closer' guardianship?—and there the word 'sweeter' flashed in, confusingly. But that was not business. Did she—that is, could she—like him well enough to like to give up her own way? Answer, a prompt negative. Never!—Not if she liked him ten times more than—but it is awkward dealing with unknown quantities: Hazel sheered off. Suppose she didn't like it—could she do it? do it so that he would never find out what it cost her? do it to give him pleasure? do it because it was his right? Waiving her own pleasure, pushing aside her own will? Could she do it?—Well, there was not the least hope that she would wish to do it. She should always like her own best: no doubt of that.

Then could she (perhaps) learn such trust in his judgment, as would turn her own will round?—As hopeless as the other. Sometimes, of course, he might be right,—by a great stretch of leniency Miss Wych allowed so far,—sometimes, it was certain, she would. Well: could she give his judgment as well as his will the right of way? For unless she could, Wych hazel felt quite sure of one thing: she should never be happy a minute in such guardianship. She had not dared to give herself a possible reason for liking it in the old times,—could she do it, now that she dared? Was she willing to give up, sometimes or always, to just that one person in all the world?—turning her bonds into bracelets, and wearing them royally? And there her thoughts went down to the real bracelet on her arm, and its motto, so suddenly become his:

'In hope of eternal life.'—Would he care for her any more?

O how thoughts tired themselves, toiling round these points! and slowly uprising from them came yet another, which filled the air. What was she to say at the year's end?—or, if this were the year's end, what would she say now?—supposing Mr. Rollo still cared what she said. But that last question must be studied by and by. Mr. Rollo would have been amused, may be, and may be a little touched, if he had known the ogre-like shapes in which the girl conjured him up, just to see if she could endure him so: putting herself to superhuman tests. But her imagination played tricks, after all; for every Afrite came up with a face and voice before which she yielded, perforce; and even her favourite scene of standing still as the bay and having him snap his fingers for her, ended one day in a laugh, as she thought what she would say if he ever did. Then finding she had got very far beyond limits, Hazel coloured furiously and ran away from her thoughts. But they hindered her new study, and interrupted it; and the study brought up the new pain; only slowly through it all, one thing gradually grew clear, helped on by her pain perhaps as much as anything: she would rather belong to somebody than not—if somebody wanted her! And there was only one somebody in the world, of whom that was true.

Whereupon, with characteristic waywardness, Miss Wych at once gave up her recluse life; accepted invitations, and pulled Mr. Falkirk into a round of outdoor gaiety that nearly turned his head. Trying, perhaps, to test her discoveries, or to get rid of her thoughts; or to prove to herself conclusively that she did not wish for any more visits from Chickaree.

And so Wych Hazel knew her own secret.



Typographical errors silently corrected :

Contents : favors silently corrected as favours

Chapter 3 : This is Haydn's Dam silently corrected as This is Hadyn's Dam

Chapter 4 : in to, for the sun silently corrected as in too, for the sun

Chapter 4 : Sometime before silently corrected as Some time before

Chapter 5 : has made you to day silently corrected as has made you to-day

Chapter 5 : then he said. 'It is too silently corrected as then he said, 'It is too

Chapter 6 : said Mr Falkirk silently corrected as said Mr. Falkirk

Chapter 6 : Mr Kingsland at her feet silently corrected as Mr. Kingsland at her feet

Chapter 7 : folly or ill-humor silently corrected as folly or ill-humour

Chapter 7 : Rollo at the horse's heads silently corrected as Rollo at the horses' heads

Chapter 8 : lady could eat; silently corrected as lady could eat?

Chapter 12 : that whitehandkerchief silently corrected as that white handkerchief

Chapter 13 : just a litle bit silently corrected as just a little bit

Chapter 14 : translated from her. silently corrected as translated from her—

Chapter 15 : then you, and I can silently corrected as then you and I can

Chapter 15 : What did you say, my dear. silently corrected as What did you say, my dear?

Chapter 16 : his post down the brook; silently corrected as his post down the brook,

Chapter 16 : 'contriving;' his own silently corrected as 'contriving' his own

Chapter 17 : It is the pumpkin silently corrected as Is it the pumpkin

Chapter 18 : brown fairies to day silently corrected as brown fairies to-day

Chapter 18 : when I was a child; silently corrected as when I was a child,

Chapter 18 : Two fair days silently corrected as two fair days

Chapter 18 : of several gentleman silently corrected as of several gentlemen

Chapter 19 : until I bring you word. silently corrected as until I bring you word?

Chapter 19 : softly endeavoring silently corrected as softly endeavouring

Chapter 19 : Chickaree) ordered up silently corrected as Chickaree), ordered up

Chapter 19 : However had he dared silently corrected as How ever had he dared

Chapter 20 : Miss' Azel'll get silently corrected as Miss 'Azel'll get

Chapter 20 : =h'it's 'ere, h'it's'ere= silently corrected as =h'it's 'ere, h'it's 'ere==

Chapter 22 : disturbing Mrs. Maryland silently corrected as disturbing Miss Maryland

Chapter 22 : disagreeable, silently corrected as d=isagreeable.=

Chapter 22 : the other man about. silently corrected as the other man about?

Chapter 23 : He said after silently corrected as he said after

Chapter 23 : favorite opera air silently corrected as favourite opera air

Chapter 23 : we had a royal time? silently corrected as we had a royal time!

Chapter 23 : they last beheld you? silently corrected as they last beheld you!

Chapter 26 : a=nd her voice was clear= silently corrected as and his voice was clear

Chapter 27 : I shall wear blue to night silently corrected as I shall wear blue to-night

Chapter 27 : What's the matter! silently corrected as What's the matter?

Chapter 27 : hospitality again to night silently corrected as hospitality again to-night

Chapter 28 : you know that is a sort silently corrected as You know that is a sort

Chapter 28 : till another time. silently corrected as till another time?

Chapter 29 : Chickaree left behind. silently corrected as Chickaree left behind!

Chapter 29 : naeively silently corrected as naively

Chapter 29 : Rollo siezed silently corrected as Rollo seized

Chapter 30 : grave consideration, silently corrected as grave consideration.

Chapter 30 : added Mrs. Cole silently corrected as added Mrs. Coles

Chapter 30 : for insanity; silently corrected as for insanity.

Chapter 32 : must must here silently corrected as must here

Chapter 32 : lady and gentlemen silently corrected as lady and gentleman

Chapter 33 : best of the neighborhood silently corrected as best of the neighbourhood

Chapter 34 : the worst of is silently corrected as the worst of it

Chapter 34 : The gentlemen looked silently corrected as The gentleman looked

Chapter 35 : vis-a-vis silently corrected as vis-a-vis

Chapter 35 : hair'sbreadth silently corrected as hair's breadth

Chapter 35 : mysterieuses silently corrected as mysterieuses

Chapter 36 : decolletee silently corrected as decolletee

Chapter 36 : clergymen's back silently corrected as clergyman's back

Chapter 37 : better by and by, silently corrected as better by and by.

Chapter 38 : But Hazel silently corrected as but Hazel

Chapter 39 : in the the abstract silently corrected as in the abstract

Chapter 39 : laid head silently corrected as laid her head

Chapter 40 : neighborhood of Chickaree silently corrected as neighbourhood of Chickaree

Chapter 40 : No, Sir silently corrected as No, sir

Chapter 40 : degage air silently corrected as degage air

Chapter 41 : plunged into another, silently corrected as plunged into another.

Chapter 41 : quick way as she silently corrected as quick way as if she

Chapter 42 : became his silently corrected as become his

THE END