as one who loved her for herself.

Presently she rose, dried her eyes, and went on down the street, the dog
trotting contentedly behind her. As she came to a point beyond which the
trees cut off the view of the house, she stood still, gazing back at it
for a long time. Finally, with a gesture of renunciation, she turned and
passed swiftly out of sight.

CHAPTER XV.

It was Miss Ludington herself who, stirring unusually early, discovered
Ida's flight on going to her room.

Paul opened his eyes a few minutes later to see her standing by his
bedside, the picture of consternation.

"She is gone!" she exclaimed.

"Who is gone?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Ida has gone. Her room is empty."

Hastily dressing, he rejoined her in Ida's chamber, and together they
went over the letters she had left.

If the revelation which they contained had been made when she had been in
the house a shorter time, its effect might have been very different. But
it had come too late to produce the revulsion of feeling it might then
have caused. True, it was under a false name that she had first won their
confidence, but it was the girl herself they had learned to love. If her
name proved to be Ida Slater, why it was Ida Slater whom they loved. It
was the person, not the name.

"Oh, why did she leave us!" cried Miss Ludington, with streaming eyes, as
she finished Ida's letter to Paul. "Why did she not come to us and tell
us! We would have forgiven her. She was not so much to blame as her
parents. How can we blame her when we think how happy she has made us!
Oh, Paul! we must find her. We must bring her back."

He pressed her hand in silence. His darling, his heart's love, had gone
away from him, out into the world, and he knew not where to find her, and
yet it would be hard to say whether there was not more of exultation than
of despair in the mingled emotions which just then deprived him of the
power of speech.

He had comprehended perfectly well her confession of the deception which
she had practised on them, but the portion of her letter which had
chiefly affected him had been the impassioned avowal of her love for him.
After his recent trying ordeal in striving to subject an earthly love to
spiritual conditions, culminating the night before in the renunciation of
the hope of ever marrying her at all, there was an intoxicating happiness
in the discovery that she was every whit as earthly as he, and loved him
with a pass