when she had set down the candle on a table,
without re-lighting the gas, "but I want to see
Routh particularly. Is he in?"

"No," said Harriet, "he is not. Did you
get his letter?"

"What letter? I have not heard from him.
I have only just come up from Amherst. But
you look ill, Mrs. Routh. Does anything ail
you? Is anything wrong?"

"No," she said, hurriedly, "nothing, nothing.
Routh has been worried, that's all, and I am
very tired."

She pushed the candle further away as she
spoke, and, placing her elbow on the table,
rested her head on her hand. George looked at
her with concern. He had a kind heart and
great tenderness for women and children, and
he could forget, or, at all events, lay aside his
own anxieties in a moment at the sight of suffering
in a woman's face. His look of anxious
sympathy irritated Harriet; she moved uneasily
and impatiently, and said almost harshly:

"Never mind my looks, Mr. Dallas; they don't
matter. Tell me how you have sped on your errand
at Poynings. Has your mother kept her
promise? Have you got the money? I hope
so, for I am sorry to say Stewart wants it badly,
and has been reckoning on it eagerly. I can't
imagine how it happened you did not get his
letter."

"I have succeeded," said George. "My
mother has kept her word, God bless her, and I
came at once to tell Routh he can have the
money."

He stopped in the full tide of his animated
speech, and looked curiously at Harriet. Something
in her manner struck him as being
unusual. She was evidently anxious about the
money, glad to see him, and yet oddly absent.
She did not look at him, and while he spoke
she had turned her head sharply once or
twice, while her upraised eyelids and parted
lips gave her face a fleeting expression of intense
listening. She instantly noticed his observation
of her, and said sharply:

"Well, pray go on; I am longing to hear
your story."

"I thought you were listening to something;
you looked as if you heard something," said
George.

"So I am listening—to you," Harriet replied,
with an attempt at a smile. " So I do
hear your adventures. There's nobody up in
the house but myself. Pray go on."

So George went on, and told her all that had
befallen him at Amherst, with one important
reservation; he said nothing of Clare Carruthers
or his two meetings with the heiress at
the Sycamores; but he told her all about his
interview with his mother, and the expedient to
which she had resorted to supply his wants.
Harriet Routh listened to his story intently;
but when she heard that he had received from
Mrs. Carruthers, not money, but jewels, she
was evidently disconcerted.

"Here is the bracelet," said George, as he
took the little packet from the breast-pocket of
his coat, and handed it to her. "I don't know
much about such things, Mrs. Routh, but
perhaps you do. Are the diamonds very
valuable?"

Harriet had opened the morocco case containing
the bracelet while he was speaking, and
now she lifted the beautiful ornament from its
satin bed, and held it on her open palm.

"I am not a very capable judge," she said;
"but I think these are fine and valuable diamonds.
They are extremely beautiful." And
a gleam of colour came into her white face as
she looked at the gems with a woman's irrepressible
admiration of such things.

"I can't tell you how much I feel taking them
from her," said George. "It's like a robbery,
isn't it?" And he looked full and earnestly at
Harriet.

She started, let the bracelet fall, stooped to
pick it up, and as she raised her face again, it
was whiter than before.

'How can you talk such nonsense?" she said,
with a sudden resumption of her usual captivating
manner. "Of course it isn't. Do you
suppose your mother ever had as much pleasure
in these gewgaws in her life as she had in giving
them to you? Besides, you know you're going
to reform and be steady, and take good advice,
are you not?" She watched him very keenly,
though her tone was gay and trifling. George
reddened, laughed awkwardly, and replied:

"Well, I hope so; and the first step, you
know, is to pay my debts. So I must get
Routh to put me in the way of selling this
bracelet at once. I suppose there's no difficulty
about it. I'm sure I have heard it said
that diamonds are the same as ready money,
and the sooner the tin is in Routh's pocket the
better pleased I'll be. None the less obliged
to him, though, Mrs. Routh; remember that,
both for getting me out of the scrape, and for
waiting so long and so good-humouredly for
his money."

For an the cordiality of his tone, for all the
gratitude he expressed, Harriet felt in her inmost
heart, and told herself she felt, that he was
a changed man; that he felt his freedom, rejoiced
in it, and did not mean again to relinquish
or endanger it.

"The thing he feared has happened," she
thought, while her small white fingers were busy
with the jewels. "The very thing he feared. This
man must be got away—how am I to do it?'

The solitary candle was burning dimly; the
room was dull, cold, and gloomy. George
looked round, and was apparently thinking of
taking his leave, when Harriet said:

"I have not told you how opportune your
getting this money—for I count it as money
—is. Stay; let me light the gas. Sit down there
opposite to me, and you shall hear how things
have gone with us since you went away." She
had thrown off the abstraction of her manner,
and in a moment she lighted the gas, put the
extinguished candle out of sight, set wine upon
the table, and pulled a comfortable arm-chair
forward, in which she begged George to seat