n won't send at this time of night, that's certain!
Come, they will be back at any minute now! Let me put you to bed. I
declare," said Graves, shuddering, "a change in the weather like this is
enough to give one rheumatism! I don't call the Bath climate so
wonderful--frost one day, thaw and rain the next!"

Graves made up the fire, and then, finding Griselda quite determined to
sit up, she left her to fetch some refreshment, wisely thinking that to
urge her against her will was hopeless just then.

"She will come round, poor child! It is a dreadful shock! I almost wish
I'd told her last night; but I hadn't the courage to do it. I make no
doubt the Lord is leading her to Himself by a rough path. But I don't
like that look in her face; it is not natural. She ought to cry; tears
are always softening to grief. Not that one can call it grief to lose a
father like him!"

No, it was not grief, but it was deep pity; and it was shame, and
soreness of heart, and wounded pride.

Then that letter she had written in the fulness of her first joy--that
letter, by which she cast herself upon Leslie Travers, and confided to
him her trouble about Sir Maxwell. He had never answered it. He had come
to the house, it is true, but he had been sent away. Hours had gone by
since, and he made no sign. What could she think but that he had looked
with an unfavourable eye upon that outpouring of her full
heart--perhaps thought her reference to Sir Maxwell's hateful addresses
unmaidenly, unwomanly?

Griselda went over all this again and again, sitting as Graves had left
her, her head resting against the back of a high Chippendale chair, her
feet on the brass fender, her hands clasped, and the wealth of her
beautiful hair covering her as with a mantle.

"How shall I tell him?" she said at last. "I must tell him; he must
know; he will not wish me to be his wife now, perhaps. There is little
Norah; I cannot part from her. How selfish I am! I am not thinking of
her, or of anybody but myself. Oh, what a cruel, cruel blow to all my
hopes! Ah, mother! mother!" she exclaimed as she suddenly remembered the
case she had dropped into her wide pocket with the ring and the letter.
"Ah! mother!"

For as her cold hands drew out the case, and she pressed the spring, it
flew open, and the mother's face seemed to have a living power for the
daughter.

Sympathy and maternal love and tenderness were all seen on that
beautiful countenance; and yet there was a