poke in a clear even voice. "May I ask you--is it impertinent--what
first led you to this way of thinking?--Sophy says you were not always
so."

The colour deepened on Faith's cheek, he saw that, and deepened more.

"The teaching is always of heaven, sir. But it came to me through the
hands of the friend who was so long in our house--last year."

"And has that adventurer counselled you to trust no friend that isn't
of his way of thinking?" the doctor said with some haughtiness of
accent.

Faith raised her eyes and looked at him, the steady grave look that the
doctor never liked to meet from those soft eyes. It fixed his, till her
eyes fell with a sudden motion, and the doctor's followed
them--whither? To that gloved forefinger which he had often noticed was
kept covered. Faith was slowly drawing the covering off; and something
in her manner or her look kept his eyes rivetted there. Slowly,
deliberately, Faith uncovered the finger, and in full view the
brilliants sparkled; danced and leapt, as it seemed to Faith, whose
eyes saw nothing else. She did not dare look up, nor could, for a
double reason. She sat like a fair statue, looking still and only at
the diamond sign, while the blood in her cheeks that bore witness to it
seemed the only moving thing about her. That rose and deepened, from
crimson to scarlet, and from her cheeks to the rim of her hair.

She never saw the changes in her neighbour's face, nor what struggles
the paleness and the returning flush bore witness to. She never looked
up. She had revealed all; she was willing he should conceal all,--that
he could. It was but a minute or two, though Faith's measurement made
it a more indefinite time; and Dr. Harrison took her hand again,
precisely in his usual manner, remarked that it was possible he might
be obliged to go south in a day or two _for_ a day or two, but that he
rather thought he had cured her; and so went off, with no difference of
tone that any stranger could have told, and Faith never raised her eyes
to see how he looked.

CHAPTER XXV.

Dr. Harrison sent away his curricle and walked home,--slowly, with his
hands behind him, as if the May air had made him lazy. To any one that
met him, he wore as disengaged an air as usual; his eye was as coolly
cognizant of all upon which it fell, and his brow never looked less
thoughtful. While his head never had been more busy. He kept the secret
of his pride--he had kept and would keep it, well;