puzzled her. But it delighted her also.
Instinctively she felt there was something of
Mark Felton's doing in this. He had impressed
her as favourably as she had impressed him.
She had recognised his possession of the two
great qualities, feeling and intelligence, and her
own kindred endowments had answered to them
at once.

Was she going to be happy and useful? Was
she going to be something more than the rich
Miss Carruthers, the heiress of Poynings, who
had every luxury life could supply except that
of feeling herself of active individual importance
to any living creature? Was Poynings going
to be as pleasant as the Sycamores, and for a
more worthy reason? Clare felt in her honest
young heart that the superiority of the
Sycamores consisted principally in the fact that the
uncle who inhabited that abode was never in
her way, whereas the uncle who ruled at
Poynings was generally otherwise, and unpleasant.
It was very ungrateful of her to feel this; but
she did feel it. Was all this going to be
altered? Was she going to have the sort of
feeling that might have been hers if she had not
been the heiress of Poynings, but the real, own
daughter of a kind lady who needed and would
accept all her girlish love and eager, if
unskilful, care? It must be so, Clare thought,
now Mrs. Carruthers had her son with her, and
she no longer felt that there was injustice done
to her, for which Clare was made the reason or
the pretext, she would allow her to be all she
had always desired to be. How much uselessness,
unreality, weariness, fell away from Clare
Carruthers as she rode on, the beautiful healthful
colour rising higher in her cheeks as the
glad thoughts, the vague, sweet, unselfish hopes
of the future, expanded in her young heart. She
would tell Mrs. Carruthers some day when she
was quite well, when there should be no longer
any danger of doing her harm by the revelation,
about the mystery which had caused her so
much suffering, and then, when there should
be perfect confidence between them, she would
tell her how she had discovered that she, too,
was acquainted with Paul Ward.

Clare had never speculated seriously upon
the cause of Mrs. Carruthers's illness. Her
first convictions were, that it had originated in
some trouble about her son. The old house-
keeper's manner, the removal of the portrait,
had sufficed for Clare. This was a sacred
sorrow, sacred from Clare's curiosity, even in
her thoughts. And now it was at an end,
probably thanks to Mark Felton; but, at all
events, it was quite over. In the time to come,
that future which Clare's fancy was painting so
brightly, as her horse carried her swiftly over the
familiar road, Mrs. Carruthers might even love
her well enough to tell her the story of the past,
and what that terrible grief had been.

"I am to take Thomas up to town with me,
Mrs. Brookes, and I only wish you were coming
too," said Clare to the housekeeper at
Poynings, as a concluding item of the budget of
news she had to tell. Clare was in high spirits
by this time, Mrs. Brookes was much more
friendly than usual to the young lady, whom
she, too, had always regarded with jealousy, and
almost dislike, as the enemy of George.

"I am better here, Miss Carruthers," said
Mrs. Brookes. "I dare say there won't be
much delay in London—for Mrs. Carruthers
and master, I mean. You'll stay awhile with
Mrs. Stanhope, belike?"

"Oh dear no—I certainly shall not,"
replied Clare, with the prettiest air of importance.
"I shall come down with my uncle and aunt.
My uncle says we are to come as soon as the
doctors will let us go."

"And Mr. Felton, also, you say, Miss
Carruthers?"

"Yes, and Mr. Dallas. How delighted I
am, Mrs. Brookes—how delighted you must
be." The girl's face flushed deeply. She was
all glowing with the generous ardour of her
feelings. She had taken off her hat, and was
standing before the open window in the
morning-room, her habit gathered up in one hand,
her slight figure trembling, her beautiful face
radiant.

"I am sure it has been almost as hard for
you as for his mother. I could not say
anything about it before, Nurse Ellen"—it was
the first time Clare had ever called the old
woman by this name—"because—because I
knew nothing—no one ever told me anything,
and I must have seemed to blame my uncle.
But, indeed, it pained me very much, and now
—now I am so happy!"

Bright swift tears sparkled in her golden-
brown eyes. She dashed them away, and,
taking the old woman's hands in hers, she said,
with girlish archness,

"You must not hate me any more, Nurse
Ellen, for 'Master George' and I are going to
be very good friends."

"Hate you, my dear young lady!" said Mrs.
Brookes, who was too old to blush externally,
but who certainly felt like blushing. "How
can you have such fancies? Who could hate
you?''

"You—you dear, faithful old thing! But
it's all right now; and, Nurse Ellen," she said,
seriously, "I am sure we owe all this happy
change to Mr. Felton. The moment I saw that
man, I felt he had come to do good. By-the-
by, my uncle tells me there is no news of Mr.
Felton's son yet. I suppose you never saw
him, nurse?"

"La, bless you, no, my dear. I never saw
his father till the day he came here. Mr. Arthur
was born in America."

"Did he ever come to England before? Did
Mrs. Carruthers ever see him?"

"Never. He told his father he would see
his aunt the first thing he did, and he never
came anigh the place. I doubt he's a black
sheep, Miss Carruthers."

"I hope not, for his father's sake, nurse."

And then Clare proceeded to make various
arrangements with Mrs. Brookes, thinking the