t was evident he did not understand children. Bowing to Olive
with a stately acknowledgment, he walked on alone towards the little
wicket-gate. She noticed that his eye never turned back, either to his
dead wife's grave or to his living child. Ailie, while his shadow was
upon her, had been very quiet; when he walked away, she sprang up, gave
Olive one of those rough, sudden, childish embraces which are so sweet,
and then bounded away after her father.

Miss Rothesay watched them both disappear, and then was seized with an
eager impulse to know who were this strange father and daughter. She
remembered the tombstone, the inscription of which she had not yet seen:
for it was half-hidden by an overhanging cornice, and by the tall grass
that grew close by. Olive had to kneel down in order to decipher it. She
did so, and read:

"SARA,
Wife of the Reverend Harold Gwynne,
Died--, Aged 21."

Then, the turf she knelt on covered Sara! the kiss, yet warm on her
lips, was given by Sara's child! Olive bowed her face in the grass,
trembling violently. Far, far through long-divided years, her heart
fled back to its olden tenderness. She saw again the thorn-tree and the
garden-walk, the beautiful girlish face, with its frank and constant
smile. She sat down and wept over Sara's grave.

Then she thought of little Ailie. Oh! would that she had known this
sooner! that she might have closer clasped the motherless child, and
have seen poor Sara's likeness shining from her daughter's eyes! With
a yearning impulse Olive rose up to follow the little girl. But she
remembered the father.

How strange--how passing strange, that he with whom she had been
talking, towards whom she had felt such an awe, and yet a vague
attraction, should have been Sara's husband, and the man whose influence
had curiously threaded her own life for many years.

She felt glad that the mystery was now solved--that she had at last seen
Harold Gwynne.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Miss Rothesay was very silent during the walk home. She accounted for it
to Christal by telling the simple truth--that in the churchyard she had
found the grave of an early and dear friend. Her young companion looked
serious, condoled in set fashion; and then became absorbed in the
hateful labyrinths of the muddy road. Certainly, Miss Manners was never
born for a simple rustic. Olive could not help remarking this.

"No; I was born for what I am," answered