Chapter X: Just as She Had Seen It in Her Dream

Evils do not always come alone. It sometimes happens that before one astounding ill is barely glanced at, another has fallen. This was the case at Stilborough.

The town awoke one morning to find that the bank had stopped payment, and that the banker was dead. Never before in the memory of man had the like consternation been known. It can be better imagined than written. At once the worst was anticipated. No one had ever been so confided in as was Mr. Peter Castlemaine. His capacity for business, his honour and integrity, his immense wealth, had passed into a proverb. People not only trusted him, but forced upon him that trust. Many and many a man had placed in his hands all they possessed: the savings perhaps of half a lifetime; and now they saw themselves ruined and undone.

Never had the like excitement been known in the quiet town; never so much talking and gesticulating; metaphorically speaking, so much sighing and sobbing. And indeed it is to be doubted if this last was all metaphor. Thomas Hill had never been so sought after; so questioned and worried; so raved at and abused as now. All he could implore of them was to have a little patience until accounts could be gone into. Things might not, he represented, turn out as badly as people supposed. Nobody listened to him; and he felt that if all days were to be as this day, he should soon follow his master to the grave. Indeed, it seemed to him now, in the shock of this dreadful blow--his master's ruin and his master's untimely end--that his own existence henceforth would be little better than a death in life.

In the very midst of the commotion, there was brought to Stilborough news of that other calamity--the mysterious disappearance of young Anthony Castlemaine. He had been seen to enter the Friar's Keep the previous night, and had never come out again. The name of the Master of Greylands appeared to be mixed up in the affair; but in what manner was not yet understood. Verily misfortunes seemed to be falling heavily just now upon the Castlemaines.

This last event, however, after exciting due comment and wonder, was lost sight of in the other evil: for the first nearly concerned the interests of Stilborough, and the latter did not concern them at all. Their ruin, their ruin! That was the all-absorbing topic in the minds of the bewildered citizens.

In inquiry into the death of Peter Castlemaine ended in a decision that he had died from heart disease. This was arrived at chiefly by the testimony and the urgent representation of Thomas Hill. One of the medical men was supposed to hold a contrary opinion; and the dreadful doubt, previously spoken of, would always lie on Miss Castlemaine's mind; but the other was the accepted view. He was buried in the neighbouring churchyard, St. Mark's: Parson Marston, who had so often and so recently sat at his dinner-table, performing the service.

Gradually the first excitement diminished. Brains and tempers calmed down. For, added to that natural depression that succeeds to undue emotion, there arose a report that things would be well, after all, and everybody paid to the full.

In fact, it was so. The money that had been so long waited for--the speculation that had at last turned up trumps--was pouring in its returns. And there arose another source of means to be added to it.

One morning the great Nyndyll Mine Company, that had been looked upon as being as good as dead, took a turn for the better; received, so to say, a new lease of life. A fresh vein of surprising richness and unbounded extent, had been struck: the smallest shareholder might immediately reckon that his fortune was an accomplished fact: and those lucky enough to be largely interested might cease speculation for ever, and pass the time in building themselves castles and palaces--with more solid foundations than the air will furnish--to live in. The shares went up in the market like rockets: everyone was securing them as eagerly as we should pick up diamonds if we got the chance. In a very short time, the shares held by the house of Mr. Peter Castlemaine might have been resold for fifteen times the original amount paid for them.

"Is this true, Hill?" asked Mr. Castlemaine, who had come bounding over on horseback from Greylands' Rest at the first rumour of the news, and found the old clerk at his post as usual, before the private desk that had been his master's. "Can it be true?" repeated Mr. Castlemaine.

He was changed since his brother's death. That death, or something else, had told upon him strangely. He and Peter had been fond of each other. James had been proud of his brother's position in the country; his influence and good name. The shock had come upon him unexpectedly, as upon every one else: and, in a manner, affected him far more. Then, his interests were largely bound up with those of his brother; and though if he had lost all he had lent him he would still be a rich man, yet the thought was not to be indulged with indifference or contemplated pleasantly. But to do him justice, these considerations sank into insignificance, before the solemn fact of his brother's death, and the mystery and uncertainty enshrouding it.

"Is it true, Hill?" he reiterated before the clerk had time to speak. "Or is it all as a miserable delusion of Satan."

"It is true enough, sir," answered Thomas Hill. "The shares have gone suddenly up like nothing I ever knew. Alas, that it should be so!"

"Alas!" echoed Mr. Castlemaine. "What mean you, Hill? has trouble turned your brain?"

"I was thinking of my poor dear master," said the old man. "It was this very mine that helped to kill him. You see now, Mr. Castlemaine, how good his speculations were, how sound his judgment! Had he lived to see this turn of affairs, all would have been well."

"Too late to speak of that," said Mr. Castlemaine, with a deep sigh. "He is dead; and we must now give our attention to the living. This slice of luck will enable you to pay all demands. The shares must be realized at once.

"Enable us to pay every one, as I believe," assented Thomas Hill. "And otherwise we should not."

"What a strange chance it seems to be!" musingly observed Mr. Castlemaine. "A chance that rarely occurs in life. Well, as I say, it must be seized upon."

"And without delay, sir. The shares that have gone up so unexpectedly, may fall as suddenly. I'll write to-day." Mr. Castlemaine rose to depart. The clerk, who was settling to his papers, again looked off to ask a question.

"Have any tidings turned up, sir, of poor Mr. Anthony?"

"Not that I have heard of. Good-day, Hill."

The expected money was realized; other expected money was realized; and in an incredibly short space of time, for poor Thomas Hill worked with a will, the affairs of the bank were in a way of settlement, every creditor to be fully satisfied, and the late unfortunate banker's name to be saved. Anything that had been underhanded in his dealing, Thomas Hill and Mr. Castlemaine had contrived to keep from the public.

But one creditor, whose name did not appear on the books, and who had put in no demand to be satisfied, was passed over in silence. Mary Ursula's fortune had been hopelessly sacrificed; and it was already known that little, if anything, would be left for her. She knew how and why her fortune had gone: Mr. Hill had explained it all to her; it had helped to save her father's honour and good name; and had it been ten times the amount, she would freely have given it for such a purpose, and been thankful that she had it to give.

Seeing what it had done, she did not as far as she herself was concerned, look upon it with one moment's regret. True she was now poor; very poor compared with the past: she would have at most but about a hundred and fifty pounds a year; but she was in too much trouble to think much of money now. One heavy weight had been lifted--the sickening dread that the creditors would lose part or all. On that one point she was now at rest. But there were other things. There was the underlying current of fear that her father had not died of heart disease; there was the mysterious perplexity attending the disappearance of her cousin Anthony; and there was her own engagement to Mr. Blake-Gordon.

Her position was now so different from what it had been when he proposed to her, and the severity, the pride, the arrogance of Sir Richard so indisputable, that she feared the worst. Moreover, she knew, from the present conduct of both father and son, that she had cause to fear it.

Twice, and twice only, had William Blake-Gordon come to her since her father's death, and he might so easily have come to her every day in her desolation! Each time he had been kind and loving as ever; not a suspicion, not a hint of separation had appeared in look or tone; but in his manner there had been something never seen before: a reticence; a keeping back, as it were, of words that ought to come out: and instinct told her that all was not as it used to be.

"How does your father take the news?--What does he say to it, and to my loss of fortune?--Is he still willing to receive me?" she had asked on each occasion; and as often he had contrived to put aside the questions without satisfactory answer.

Days went on; her position, as to lack of fortune, was known abroad; and the suspense she endured was making her ill. One morning at the breakfast table, as she finished reading some letters that had been delivered for her, Mrs. Webb, who had scanned the letters outside from the opposite side of the table, put a question that she often did put.

"Is any one of them from Mr. Blake-Gordon, my dear?"

"No," replied Mary. And no one but herself knew what it cost her to have to say it; or how trying to her was the usual silence that followed the answer.

"I will end the suspense," she said to herself, shutting herself in her own sitting-room when the meal was over. "It is Sir Richard, I know; not William: but at least they shall not find me willing to enter the family on bare sufferance. I will give them the opportunity of retiring from the engagement--if that be what they wish for."

Drawing her desk towards her, she paused with the pen in her hand, deliberating how to write. Whether in a cold formal strain, or affectionately and confidently as of yore: and she decided on the latter.

"My DEAREST WILLIAM,

"My circumstances have so changed since the early days of our engagement, that I feel I am now, in writing to you, adopting the only course left open to me, both in fairness to you and for the sake of my own future happiness and peace of mind.

"When you proposed to me and I accepted you, I was in a very different position from that of to-day. Then I was supposed to be--nay, I supposed myself--a very rich woman. I was the daughter of a man beloved, honoured, and respected; a member of a house which, if not equal to your own in the past annals of the country, might at least mix with it on equality and hold its own amongst gentlemen. All this is now changed. My dear father is no more, my large fortune is gone, and I am left with next to nothing.

"That you have asked me to become your wife for myself alone, I feel sure of. I am certain that no thought of riches influenced you in your choice: that you would take me now as willingly as in the old days. But instinct--or presentiment tells me that others will step in to interfere between us, and to enjoin a separation. Should this be the case--should your father's consent, once given, now be withdrawn--then all must be at an end between us, and I will restore you your liberty. Without the fall approval of Sir Richard, you cannot attempt to marry me; neither should I, without it, consent to become your wife.

"If, on the other hand, that approval is still held out to us both as freely as of yore, I have only to add what you know so well--that I am yours, now as ever.

"MARY URSULA CASTLEMAINE."

The letter written, she hesitated no longer about the necessity or wisdom of the step. Sealing it, she despatched it by a trusty messenger to Sir Richard's house just beyond the town.

The news of the failure of the bank and death of its master, had reached Sir Richard Blake-Gordon when he was at a dinner party. It fell upon him with startling effect. For a moment he felt half paralyzed: and then the blood once more took its free course through his veins as he remembered that his son's marriage was yet a thing of the future.

"Never," he said to himself with energy. "Never, as long as I live. I may have a battle with William; but I could always twist him round my fingers. In that respect he is his poor mother all over. No such weakness about me. Failed for millions! Good heavens, what an escape! We shall be quite justified in breaking with the daughter; and she and William have both sense enough to see it."

He was not of those who put off disagreeable things until they will be put off no longer. That very night, meeting his son when he got home, he began, after expressing regret for the banker's sudden death.

"A sad affair about the bank! Who would have expected it?"

"Who, indeed!" returned William Blake-Gordon. "Everyone thought the bank as safe as the Bank of England. Safer, if anything."

"It only shows how subject, more or less, all private concerns are to fluctuations--changes--failures--and what not," continued Sir Richard.

"Whatever this may be--failure or not--it will at least be open and straightforward," said William. "Mr. Peter Castlemaine was the soul of honour. The embarrassments must have arisen from other quarters, and Thomas Hill says the trouble and anxiety have killed him."

"Poor man! People are expecting it to be an awful failure. Not five shillings in the pound for the creditors, and all the Castlemaine family ruined. This must terminate your engagement."

The sudden mandate fell on the young man's ears with a shock. He thought at the first moment his father must be jesting.

"It must terminate my engagement?" he retorted, catching sight of the dark stern countenance. "What, give up Mary Castlemaine? Never, father! Never will I do it so long as I shall live."

"Yes, you will," said Sir Richard, quietly. "I cannot allow you to sacrifice your prospects in life."

"To give her up would be to sacrifice all the prospects I care for."

"Tush, William!"

"Think what it is you would advise, sir!" spoke the son with ill-suppressed emotion. "Putting aside my own feelings, think of the dishonour to my name! I should be shunned by all good and true men; I should shun myself. Why, I would not live through such dishonour."

Sir Richard took a pinch of snuff.

"These misfortunes only render it the more urgent for me to carry out the engagement, sir. Is it possible that you do not see it? Mary Castlemaine's happiness is, I believe, bound up in me; and mine, I freely avow it, is in hers. Surely, father, you would not part us!"

"Listen, William," spoke Sir Richard, in the calm, stern tones he could assume at will, more telling, more penetrating than the loudest passion. "Should Miss Castlemaine become portionless--as I believe it will turn out she has become--you cannot marry her. Or, if you do, it would be with my curse. I would not advise you, for your own sake, to invoke that. You can look elsewhere for a wife: there are numbers of young women as eligible as ever was Miss Castlemaine."

Long they talked together, far on into the night, the stern tones on the one hand becoming persuasive ones; the opposition sinking into silence. When they separated, Sir Richard felt that he had three parts gained his point.

"It is all right," said he mentally, as he stalked up to bed with his candle. "William was always ultra dutiful."

Sir Richard interdicted his son's visits to Miss Castlemaine; and the one or two scant calls the young man made on her, were made in disobedience. But this state of things could not last. William Blake-Gordon, with his yielding nature, had ever possessed a rather exaggerated idea of the duty a son owes his father: moreover, he knew instinctively that Mary would never consent to marry in opposition to Sir Richard, even though he brought himself to do it.

It soon became known abroad that Miss Castlemaine's fortune had certainly been sacrificed. Sir Richard was cold and distant to his son, the young man miserable.

One day the baronet returned to the charge; intending his mandate to be final. They were in the library. William's attitude was one of utter dejection as he leaned against the side of the window, looking forth on the spring sunshine: sunshine that brought no gladness for him. He saw too clearly what the end would be: that his own weakness, or his sense of filial duty, call it which you may, must give way before the stronger will, the commanding nature.

"Your conduct is now simply cruel to Miss Castlemaine," Sir Richard was saying. "You are keeping her all this time in suspense. Or, perhaps--worse still--allowing her to cherish the hope that her altered circumstances will not cause the engagement to terminate."

"I can't help it," replied William. "The engagement has no business to terminate. It was sacredly entered into: and, without adequate reason, it ought to be as sacredly kept."

"You are a living representation of folly," cried Sir Richard. "Adequate reason! There's reason enough for breaking off fifty engagements. Can you not see the matter in its proper light?"

"That is what I do see," replied William, sadly. "I see that the engagement ought to be maintained. For my own part, I never can go to Mary and tell her that I am to give her up."

"Coward," said Sir Richard, with a great frown. "Then I must."

"I fear you are right," returned William: "a coward I am, little better. It is a cowardly thing to break off this alliance--the world will call it by a very different name. Father," he added, appealingly, "is my happiness nothing to you? Can you sacrifice us both to your pride and vainglory."

"You will see it very differently some day," returned Sir Richard. "When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will laugh at yourself for these ridiculously romantic ideas. Instead of marring your happiness, I am making it. Substantially, too."

"I think, sir," said Mr. Blake-Gordon, not liking the tone, "that you might leave me to be the judge of what is best for my own happiness."

"There you are mistaken, my dear William. You have but a young head on your shoulders: you see things de tort et de travers, as the French have it. The engagement with Peter Castlemaine's daughter would never have received my sanction but for her great wealth. We are poor, and it is essential that you should marry a large fortune if you marry at all. That wealth of hers has now melted, and consequently the contract is at an end. This is the common-sense view of the circumstances which the world will take. Done, it must be, William. Shall I see the young lady for you? or will you be a man and see her for yourself?"

But before Mr. Blake-Gordon had time to reply, a note was brought in. It was the one written by Miss Castlemaine; and it could not have arrived more seasonably for Sir Richard's views. The young man opened it; read it to the end: and passed it to his father in silence.

"A very sensible girl, upon my word," exclaimed Sir Richard, when he had mastered the contents by the aid of a double eye-glass. "She sees things in their right light. Castlemaine was, after all, an extremely honourable man, and put proper notions into her. This greatly facilitates matters, William. Our path is now quite smoothed out for us. I will myself write to her. You can do the same, if you are so disposed. Had this only come before, what arguments it might have saved!"

Upon which the baronet sat down, and indited the following epistle:--

"My dear young Lady,

"Your note--which my son has handed to me--has given me in one sense a degree of pleasure; for I perceive in it traces of good sense and judgment, such as women do not always possess.

"You are right in supposing that under the present aspect of affairs a marriage between yourself and Mr. Blake-Gordon would be unadvisable." (She had supposed nothing of the sort, but it suited him to assume it.) "And therefore I concur with you in your opinion that the engagement should terminate.

"Deeply though I regret this personally, I have yet felt it my duty to insist upon it to my son: not only for his sake, but for your own. The very small means I am able to spare to him render it impossible for him to take a portionless wife, and I could never sanction a step that would drag him down to poverty and embarrassment. I was about to write to you, or to see you, to tell you this, for William shrank from the task, and your note has agreeably simplified what had to be done. We cordially, though reluctantly, agree to what you have had the good feeling to propose.

"At all times I shall be delighted to hear of your welfare and happiness; and, believe me, my dear Miss Castlemaine, you have not a more sincere well-wisher than your devoted friend and servant,

"RICHARD BLAKE-GORDON."

With much inward satisfaction the baronet folded the letter. He was wise enough not to show it to his son; who, honourable in thought and feeling as he was weak in nature, might have been prompted to tear it into shreds, and declare that come good, come ill, he would stand true to his plighted word.

"There!" said Sir Richard, with a grunt of relief, as he affixed his seal, "I have accomplished that task for you, William. As I said before, write to her yourself if you will, but be quick about it. In half an hour I shall send back my answer."

"Give me that time to myself," said William, rising to leave the room. "If I have anything to say I will write it."

At the end of the half-hour he had written the following words; and the note was despatched with his father's:--

"MY DARLING, I suppose we must separate; but all happiness for me is over in this world. You will, however, accord me a final interview; a moment for explanation; I cannot part without that. I will be with you this afternoon at four o'clock.

"In spite of all,

"I am for ever yours--and yours only,

"WILLIAM."

Unlike his father's letter, there was no hypocrisy in this, no stupid form of words. When he wrote that all happiness for him was over, he meant it; and he wrote truly. Perhaps he deserved no less: but, if he merited blame, judgment might accord him some pity with it.

When Mary received the letters, she felt certain of their contents before a word was seen. Sir Richard would not himself have written but to break off the engagement. He had not even called upon her in all these long weary days of desolation and misery: and there could be but one motive for this unkind neglect. His note would now explain it.

But when she came to read its contents: its hollow hypocrisy, its plausible, specious argument, its profession of friendship and devotion; the pang of the death-blow gave place to the highest anger and indignation.

At that moment of bitterness the letter sounded to her desperately hollow and cruel, worse perhaps than it even was. The pain was more than her wounded spirit--so tried in the past few weeks--could bear; and with a brief but violent storm of sobs, with which no tears came, she tore the letter in two and threw it into the fire.

"At least he might have done it differently," she said to herself in her anguish. "He might have written in a manner that would have made me feel it less."

It was one of her first lessons in the world's harshness, in the selfish nature of man. Happy for her if in her altered circumstances she had not many such to learn!

Presently, when she had grown a little calm, she opened the other note, almost wondering whether it would be a repetition of the cool falsity of Sir Richard's. Ah no, no!

"I will see him," she said, when she read the few words. "But the interview shall be brief. Of what use to prolong the agony?" So when William Blake-Gordon, true to his appointment, reached the bank at four o'clock, he was admitted.

How different an aspect the house presented from the bustle and the sociality of the days gone by! A stillness, as of a dead city, reigned. Rooms that had re-echoed with merry voices and light footsteps above, with the ring of gold and the tones of busy men below, were now silent and deserted. No change of any kind had yet been made in the household arrangements, but that was soon to come. The servants would be discharged, the costly furniture was already marked for the hammer; Mrs. Webb must leave, and--what was to be the course of Miss Castlemaine? She had not even asked herself the question, while the engagement with Mr. Blake-Gordon remained officially unbroken.

The butler opened the door to him and ushered him into the drawing-room. Mary came forward to greet him with her pale, sad face--a face that startled her lover. He clasped her to him, and she burst into sobs and tears. There are moments of anguish when pride gives way.

"Oh, my darling!" he cried, scarcely less agitated than herself, "you are feeling this cruel decision almost unto death! Why did you write that letter?--why did you not remain firm?--and thereby tacitly insist on our engagement being fulfilled?"

Never had his weakness of nature been more betrayed than then. "Why did not she insist?"--as if conscious that he was powerless to do it! She felt it keenly: she felt that in this, at least, a gulf lay between them.

"What I have done is for the best," she said, gently disengaging herself, and suppressing the signs of her emotion, as she motioned him to a seat. "In my altered circumstances I felt--at least I feared--that no happiness could await our marriage. Your father, in the first place, would never have given his consent."

"There are times when duty to a father should give place to duty to one's self," he returned, forgetting how singularly this argument was contradicted by his own conduct. "All my happiness in life is over."

"As you wrote to me," she said. "But by-and-by, when you shall have forgotten all this, William, and time has brought things round, you will meet with some one who will be able to make you happy: perhaps as much so as I should have done: and you will look back on these days as a dream."

"Mary!"

"And it will be better so."

"And you?" he asked, with a stifled groan of remorse.

"I?" she returned, with a smile half sad, half derisive. "I am nobody now. You have a place to fill in the world; I shall soon be heard of no more."

"But where are you going to live, Mary? You have nothing left out of the wreck."

"I have a little. Enough for my future wants. At present I shall go on a visit to Greylands' Rest. My uncle urges it, and he is the nearest representative of my father. Depend upon it, I shall meet with some occupation in life that will make me contented if not happy."

"Until you marry," he said. "Marry some man more noble than I; more worthy of you."

For a moment she looked steadily at him, and then her face flushed hot with pain. But she would not contradict it. She began to think that she had never quite understood the nature of Mr. Blake-Gordon.

"In the future, you and I will probably not meet often, William; if at all," she resumed. "But you will carry with you my best wishes, and I shall always rejoice to hear of your happiness and prosperity. The past we must, both of us, try to forget."

"I shall never forget it," was the impulsive answer.

"Do you remember my dream?" she sadly asked. "The one I told you of that ball night. How strangely it is being fulfilled! And, do you know, I think that beautiful Dresden vase, that papa broke, must have been an omen of the evil in store for the house."

He stood up now, feeling how miserable it all was, feeling his own littleness. For a short while longer they talked together: but Mary wished the interview over.

When it came to the actual parting she nearly broke down. It was very hard and bitter. Her life had not so long ago promised to be so bright! Now all was at an end. As to marriage--never for her: of that kind of happiness the future contained none. Calmness, patience in suffering, resignation, and in time even contentment, she might find in some path of duty; but beyond that, nothing.

They stood close together, her hands held in his, their hearts aching with pain and yearning, each to each, with that sad yearning that is born of utter hopelessness. A parting like this seems to be more cruel than the parting of death.

"Come what may, Mary, I shall love you, and you alone, to the end. You tell me I shall marry: it may be so; I know not: but if so, my wife, whomsoever she may be, will never have my love; never, never. We do not love twice in a lifetime. And, if those who have loved on earth are permitted to meet in Heaven, you and I, my best and dearest, shall assuredly find together in Eternity the happiness denied us here."

She was but mortal, after all; and the words sent a strange thrill of pleasure through her heart. Ah, no! he would never love another as he had loved her; she knew it: and it might be--it might be--that they should recognise each other in the bliss of a never-ending Hereafter!

And so they parted, each casting upon the other a long, last, lingering look, just as Mary had already imagined in her foreboding dream.

That evening, as Miss Castlemaine was sitting alone, musing on the past, the present, and the future, nursing her misery and her desolation, the door opened and Thomas Hill was shown in. She had seen more of him than of any one else, save Mrs. Webb, since the ruin.

"Miss Mary," said he, when they had shaken hands, "I've come to ask you whether the report can be true?"

"What report?" inquired Mary: but a suspicion of what he must mean rushed over her, ere the words had well passed her lips.

"Perhaps it is hardly a report," said the clerk, correcting himself; "for I doubt if any one else knows of it. I met Sir Richard to-day, my dear young lady," he continued, advancing and taking her hands, his tone full of indignant commiseration; "and in answer to some remark I made about your marriage, he said the marriage was not to take place; it was at an end. I did not believe him."

"It is quite true," replied Mary, with difficulty controlling her voice. "I am glad that it is at an end."

"Glad?" he repeated, looking into her face with his kindly old eyes.

"Yes. It is much better so. Sir Richard, in the altered state of my fortunes, would never think me a sufficiently good match for his son."

"But the honour, Miss Mary! Or rather the dishonour of their breaking it off! And your happiness? Is that not to be thought of?"

"All things that are wrong will right themselves," she replied with a quiet smile. "At least, Sir Richard thinks so.

"And Mr. Blake-Gordon, is he willing to submit to the separation quietly? Pardon me, Miss Mary. If your father were alive, I should know my place too well to say a word on the subject: but--but I seem to have been drawn very close to you since that time of desolation, and my heart resents all slight on you as he would have resented it. I could not rest until I knew the truth."

"Say no more about it," breathed Mary. "Let the topic be between us as one that had never had existence. It will be for my happiness."

"But can nothing be done?" persisted Thomas Hill. "Should not your uncle go and expostulate with them and expose their villainy--for I can call it by no other name?"

"Not for worlds," she said, hastily. "It is I who have broken the engagement, Mr. Hill; not they. I wrote this morning and restored Mr. Blake-Gordon his freedom: this afternoon I bade him farewell for ever. It is all over and done with: never mention it again to me."

"And you--what are your plans for the future?--And, oh, forgive me for being anxious, my dear young lady! I had you on my knee often as a little one, and in my heart you have been as dear to me and seemed to grow up as my own daughter. Where shall you live?"

"I cannot yet tell where. I am poor, you know," she added, with one of her sweet, sad smiles. "For the present I am going on a visit to my Uncle James."

"Greylands' Rest would be your most suitable home now," spoke Thomas Hill slowly and dubiously. "But--I don't know that you would like it. Mrs. Castlemaine----"

He stopped, hardly liking to say what was in his mind--that Mrs. Castlemaine was not the most desirable of women to live with. Mary understood him.

"Only on a visit," she said. "While there, I shall have leisure to think of the future. My hundred and fifty pounds a year--and that much you all say will be secured to me----"

"And the whole of what I possess, Miss Mary."

"My hundred and fifty pounds a year will seem as a sufficient income to me, once I have brought my mind down from its heights," she continued, with another faint smile, as though unmindful of the interruption. "Trust me, my dear old friend, the future shall not be as gloomy as, by the expression of your face, you seem to anticipate. I am not weak enough to throw away my life in repining, and in wishing for what Heaven sees fit to deny me."

"Heaven?" he repeated in an accent of reproof.

"Let us say circumstances, then. But in the very worst fate, it may be, that Heaven's hand may be working--overruling all for our eventual good. My future life can be a useful one; and I, if not happy, at least contented."

But that night, in the solitude of her chamber, she opened a small box, containing nothing but a few faded white rose-leaves. It was the first trembling offering William Blake-Gordon had given her, long before he dared to tell of his love. Before they were again put away out of sight, tears, bitter as any shed in her whole life, had fallen upon them.