"If I am ever to see her again, it shall be in
my own character, and by no tricky subterfuge.
If she ever comes to care for me, she shall not
be ashamed of me."

George Dallas returned to the inn, where his
taciturnity and preoccupation did not escape
notice by the waiters and Mr. Page, who
accounted for it by commenting on his request
for writing materials, to the use of which he
addressed himself in his own room, as a
"hoddity of them literary gents; if they ain't blabby
and blazin' drunk, they're most times uncommon
sullen. This un's a poetical chap, I take it."

That evening George heard from his mother.
She desired him to come to Poynings at twelve
o'clock on the following Monday (this was Saturday),
and to wait in the shrubbery on the left
of the house until she should join him. The
note was brief, but affectionate, and of course
made George understand that she had received
the jewels.

Late in the afternoon of the day which had
witnessed her second interview with the young
man whom she knew as Paul Ward, and with
whom her girlish fancy was delightfully busy,
Clare Carruthers arrived at Poynings. She
received an affectionate greeting from Mrs.
Carruthers, inquired for her uncle, learned that no
communication had been received from him that day,
and therefore his wife concluded that his original
arrangement to return on the following Tuesday
morning remained unaltered; and then went off
to see that Sir Lancelot, who had been brought
home from the Sycamores by a groom, was well
cared for. Somehow, the beautiful animal had
a deeper interest than ever for his young
mistress. She touched his silken mane with a
lighter, more lingering touch; she talked to him
with a softer voice.

"He did not forget to mention you," she
whispered to the intelligent creature, as she
held his small muzzle in one hand and stroked
his face with the other. "I wonder, I wonder,
shall we ever see him again."

When the two ladies were together in the
drawing-room that evening, and the lamps were
lighted, cheerful fires burning brightly in the
two grates, which were none too many for the
proportions of the noble room, the scene
presented was one which would have suggested a
confidential, cozy chat to the uninitiated male
observer. But there was no chat and no
confidence there that evening. Ordinarily, Mrs.
Carruthers and Clare "got on" together very
nicely, and were as thorough friends as the
difference in their respective ages and the
trouble in the elder lady's life, hidden from the
younger, would permit. But each was a woman
of naturally independent mind, and their
companionship did not constrain either. Therefore
the one sat down at a writing-table, and the
other at the piano, without either feeling that
the other expected to be talked to. Had not
Mrs. Carruthers's preoccupation, her absorption
in the hopes and fears which were all inspired
by her son, so engrossed her attention, that she
could not have observed anything not specially
impressed upon her notice, she would have seen
that Clare was more silent than usual, that her
manner was absent, and that she had a little the
air of making music an excuse for thought.
The leaves of her music-book were not turned,
and her fingers strayed over the keys, in old
melodies played almost unconsciously, or paused
for many minutes of unbroken silence. She
had not mentioned the incidents of the last two
days to Mrs. Carruthers, not that she intended
to leave them finally unspoken of, but that some
undefined feeling prompted her to think them
over first;—so she explained her reticence to
herself.

While Clare played, Mrs. Carruthers wrote,
and the girl, glancing towards her sometimes,
saw that her face wore an expression of painful
and intense thought. She wrote rapidly, and
evidently at great length, covering sheet after
sheet of foreign letter-paper with bold firm
characters, and once Clare remarked that she
took a memorandum-book out of her pocket
and consulted it. As she replaced the book, a
slip of paper fluttered from between the leaves
and fell to the ground, unobserved either by
herself or Clare. Shortly afterwards Mrs.
Carruthers rose, collected her papers into a loose
heap upon the table, and left the room, still with
the same preoccupied expression on her face.
Clare went on playing for a few moments, then,
finding Mrs. Carruthers did not return, she
yielded to the sense of freedom inspired by
finding herself alone, and, leaving the piano,
went over to one of the fireplaces and stood by
the low mantelpiece, lost in thought. Several
minutes passed away as she stood thus, then
she roused herself, and was about to return to
the piano, when her attention was attracted to
a small slip of paper which lay on the floor near
the writing-table. She picked it up, and saw
written upon it two words only, but words
which caused her an indescribable thrill of
surprise. They were

                              PAUL WARD.

"Mrs. Carruthers dropped this paper," said
Clare to herself, "and he wrote the name. I
know his hand, I saw it in the book he took the
sketch in. Who is he? How does she know
him? I wish she would return. I must ask her."
But then, in the midst of her eagerness, Clare
remembered a certain air of mystery about her
chance acquaintance; she recalled the tone in
which he had said, "That is my secret," the
hints he had let fall that there existed
something which time must clear up. She remembered,
too, that he had not betrayed any
acquaintance with Mrs. Carruthers, had not even
looked like it when she had mentioned Poynings
and her uncle (and Clare had a curiously
distinct recollection of Mr. Paul Ward's looks);
finally she thought how—surely she might be
said to know, so strongly and reasonably did she
suspect—that there were trials and experiences
in Mrs. Carruthers's life to which she held no
clue, and perhaps this strange circumstance
might be connected with them.

"It is his secret and hers, if she knows him,"
the girl thought, "and I shall best be true and