y with a pathetic earnestness
of appeal. "It is so good of you, so generous of you to speak like
that!" For the first time she ventured to raise her eyes to his face.
They were full of gratitude.

Mr. Roscorla complimented himself on his knowledge of women: a younger
man would have flown into a fury. "Oh dear, yes! Wenna," he said
lightly, "I suppose all girls have their fancies stray a little bit from
time to time; but is there any harm done? None whatever. There is
nothing like marriage to fix the affections, as I hope you will discover
ere long--the sooner the better, indeed. Now we will dismiss all those
unpleasant matters we have been writing about."

"Then you do forgive me? You are not really angry with me?" she said;
and then, finding a welcome assurance in his face, she gratefully took
his hand and touched it with her lips.

This little act of graceful submission quite conquered Mr. Roscorla, and
definitely removed all lingering traces of anger from his heart. He was
no longer acting clemency when he said, with a slight blush on his
forehead, "You know, Wenna, I have not been free from blame, either.
That letter--it was merely a piece of thoughtless anger; but still it
was very kind of you to consider it canceled and withdrawn when I asked
you. Well, I was in a bad temper at that time. You cannot look at things
so philosophically when you are far away from home: you feel yourself so
helpless, and you think you are being unfairly--However, not another
word. Come, let us talk of all your affairs, and all the work you have
done since I left."

It was a natural invitation, and yet it revealed in a moment the
hollowness of the apparent reconciliation between them. What chance of
mutual confidence could there be between these two? He asked Wenna if
she had been busy in his absence; and the thought immediately occurred
to him that she had had at least sufficient leisure to go walking about
with young Trelyon. He asked her about the sewing club, and she stumbled
into the admission that Mr. Trelyon had presented that association with
six sewing-machines. Always Trelyon, always the recurrence of that
uneasy consciousness of past events which divided these two as
completely as the Atlantic had done! It was a strange meeting after that
long absence.

"It is a curious thing," he said rather desperately, "how marriage
makes a husband and wife sure of each other. Anxiety is all over then.
We have near us, out in Jamaica