t man she has set
her wishes upon?"

I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something
like anger against her growing in my heart.

"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any
girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox
is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."

My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it
was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence
between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained--indeed, we were
more than ever gentle and tender in our ways ... but there was a subject
which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and
there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to
read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.

But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of
any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point
that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The
young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth,
beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed
that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and
proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory
fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the
watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels
filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an
air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no
one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half
so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her
with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it
a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with
a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire
carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself
direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.

I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over
poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find
there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken
possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her
husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of he