scarcely spoken to,
hardly looked at me. I think he has given me up. I know not what he
means to do, but I think he means to let me have my own way. I think I
should have been silent to the last, but that I saw my mother to-day. I
saw her! I saw her!

* * * * *

"And now you will tell her all--everything," I said, squeezing her
hands, while the tears were raining down my face.

"Margery, Margery!" cried Rachel, "how can I give up Arthur? Here he has
come to me after these years of waiting, and presses me to name a day
for our marriage, and I am to meet him with a story like this! He would
despise me."

"I think," said I, "that if he be a generous man he will forgive you.
After loving you so long, he will not give you up so easily. And your
mother," I added. "Think of all she has suffered. Is she worth no
sacrifice?"

"She never knew me," said Rachel gloomily, "and she will be happier
never to know me. She could not have smiled as she did to-day if she had
not forgotten that I ever existed."

"That is a selfish delusion," I said. "If your mother never knew you, it
is plain, at least, that you have never known her. Such a woman could
not forget her child. You cannot think that she has not sought for you,
and mourned for you, all these years?"

"Oh no," said Rachel, with another burst of sorrow, "John has told me.
They searched, they advertised, they suffered agony, and feared every
terrible thing, till at last they were obliged to soothe one another by
trying to think me, by speaking of me as, dead. Little Mopsie thinks I
am dead. So it has been, and so it must be."

"So it must not be," I persisted, and I fought with her all night. The
dawn was in the room before she got up to leave me, pale, and worn, and
weary, but promising that she would make yet one more great struggle
with herself to break the chain of deceit with which one rash falsehood
had so strongly bound her.

CHAPTER XIV.

I had the happiness of seeing my friends the Tyrrells depart for London
without me. I think they were both, brother and sister, somewhat tired
of my inconsistencies and vagaries, and I daresay they felt as little
sorrow at parting as I did.

The long hot days of summer followed one another in a slow wandering
fashion. No news reached us from the farm. I had vaguely hoped that John
would come and speak to me again; but we neither saw him nor heard from
him. Mr. Hill was from home during