ver so slight a stain rested. She said to herself that the girl's stay
beneath their cottage roof must be cut as short as possible.

It was decided that Jessie Bain should remain at the cottage of the
Morays until she had ample time to write to her uncle and receive his
reply.

Jessie mailed her letter before she went to sleep that night. Annabel
easily dropped off to slumber, but it was not so with Jessie; for had
not this been the most eventful day of her life?

How she wished Mrs. Varrick had not exacted a promise from her that she
would never again hold any communication with her son Hubert! Would he
believe her guilty when he returned home and his mother told him all
that had transpired?

She could imagine the horror on his face as he listened; and this
thought was so bitter to Jessie that she cried herself to sleep over it.

The third day of her stay a letter from her uncle came to her. Her
cousin was married and gone away, he wrote, and he would be only too
glad to forget and forgive by-gones.

Two days later, Frank Moray saw her safely on the train which would take
her as far as Clayton, where her uncle promised to meet her.

"If I write to you sometimes, will you answer my letters, little
Jessie?" asked Frank Moray, as he found her a seat in a well-crowded
car, and bent over her for the last glance into the girl's beautiful,
wistful face.

"Yes," she answered, absently.

For a moment his hand closed over hers; he looked at her with his whole
soul in his honest eyes, then he turned and quickly left her.

He stood on the platform and watched her sweet face at the window until
the train was out of sight, then he moved slowly away.

Jessie stared hard through the window, but she never saw any of the
scenes through which she was whirling so rapidly. Her thoughts were with
Hubert Varrick.

It was dusk when she reached her destination, and according to his
promise her uncle was at the depot to meet her.

It was with genuine joy that he hurried forward to greet the girl,
though they had parted but a few short months ago in such bitter anger.

"I am glad to get you back again, little Jessie," he declared, eagerly;
"and, as I wrote to you, we will let by-gones be by-gones, little girl,
and forget the past unpleasantness between us by wiping it out of our
minds as though it had never been. I missed you awfully, little one, and
I've had a lonesome time of it since your cousin went away. Home isn't
home to