e dismissed, but he could not doubt that light would
soon shine through the darkness, and the true facts of the case would
yet be known. He would still urge that if anything should transpire in
the knowledge of any one present that it was important he should know,
no selfish motive should induce him to remain silent, while at the same
time he would deprecate suspicions of each other, and would remind them
that as the law judged those to be innocent who were not proved to be
guilty, so it must be in this case. With this the Doctor dismissed the
assembly.

* * * * *

So far in our story we have confined ourselves to the characters in
whom we are immediately interested, without any reference to their
previous history or family connections. But I must pause here to take a
glance into two homesteads, a few days after the events just described.

In the breakfast-room at Ashley House Mr. Morton had laid aside his
newspaper, and was reading a letter from Dr. Brier. It was the second
or third time he had read it, and it seemed to disturb him. Mr. Morton
hated to be disturbed in any way. He was a hard man, who walked
straight through the world without hesitating or turning to the right
hand or to the left. He was a strong-minded man--at least, everybody
who got in his way had good reason to think so. But he had a rather
weak-minded wife. Poor Mrs. Morton was a flimsy woman, without much
stamina, mental or bodily. She stroked her cat, read her novel, lay
upon the sofa, or lolled in her carriage, and interested herself in
little that was really necessary to a true life. It was in such an
atmosphere as this that Ethel Morton lived and Digby had been reared.

Their mother had died when Ethel was a very little baby, and when the
new Mrs. Morton came home the children were old enough to feel that
they could not hope to find in her what they had lost in their true
mamma.

Ethel was a bright, pleasant girl, and, being left very much to
herself, she seemed to live in a world of her own. As a child she
peopled this world with dolls, and each doll had an individuality, a
history, and a set of ideas attached to it, which gave her almost a
human companionship in it. Then came the world of fairies and gnomes
and elves, amongst whom she held sway as queen, and many a plant and
shrub in the garden, and glade in the woodlands, was a part of her
fairy-land. And, now that she was nearly seventeen, a new world