ss in his look that fully accorded with all he
said, and the old lady felt the most honest pity for his sufferings.

"I don't know if I'm perfectly safe here," said he, looking fearfully
around him. "Are you sure you can conceal me, if need be?"

"Quite sure; have no fear about that. I'll tell the girls that your
safety requires the greatest caution and secrecy, and you'll see how
careful they will be."

"Girls _will_ talk, though," said he, doubtingly.

"There is the double security here--they have no one to talk to," she
said, with a faint smile.

"Very true. I was forgetting how retired your life was here. Now for
the next point. What are you to tell them--I mean, how much are they to
know?"

The old lady looked puzzled; she felt she might easily have replied, "If
they only know no more than I can tell them, your secret will certainly
be safe;" but, as she looked at his haggard cheek and feverish eye, she
shrunk from renewing a theme full of distress and suffering. "Leave it
to me to say something--anything which shall show them that you are in a
serious trouble, and require all their secrecy and sympathy."

"Yes, that may do--at least for the present. It will do at least with
Emily, who bears me no ill will."

"You wrong Florence if you imagine that _she_ does. It was only the
other day, when, in a letter from Loyd, she read that you had left the
army, she said how sorry she was you had quitted the career so suited to
your abilities."

"Indeed! I scarce hoped for so much of interest in me."

"Oh, she talks continually about you; and always as of one, who
only needs the guidance of some true friend to be a man of mark and
distinction yet."

"It is very good, very kind of her," he said; and, for an instant,
seemed lost in thought.

"I'll go back now," said Miss Grainger, "and prepare them for your
coming. They'll wonder what has detained me all this while. Wait one
moment for me here."

Calvert, apparently, was too much engaged with his own thoughts to hear
her, and suffered her to go without a word. She was quickly back again,
and beckoning him to follow her, led the way to the drawing-room.

Scarcely had Calvert passed the doorway, when the two girls met him, and
each taking a hand, conducted him without a word to a sofa. Indeed, his
sickly look, and the air of downright misery in his countenance, called
or all their sympathy and kindness.

"I have scarcely strength to thank you!" he said to them,