resh.

"I wonder what has made him do it? Has he left no note behind him?"

"Not a line--nor a message for me," replied Rose. "Only a scrawl in
pencil which the groom found on the saddle-room table, to say that
nobody need try to trace him. And only to think that our banns were
put up yesterday."

"I think you are wasting your tears over a heartless scamp!" said the
rector, a little impatiently. "Did you come with any message from the
Court?"

"No, sir; I only came to ask you if I ought to tell?"

"To tell what?"

"All that happened last night. There was a dreadful quarrel between
Dixon and Tom Burney; and that's how Dixon got hurt. He was stunned,
and I thought he was dead; and Tom ran off, and, when Dixon came to
himself, his one notion was that I was not to tell any one how he came
by his fall."

"So you promised to back him up in a lie!" said the rector, coldly.
"One can scarcely wonder that you wished to keep the thing quiet,
however. You've terribly misused God's good gift of a pretty face,
Rose. You have played with two men; and chosen the wrong one, and
driven the other half off his head with misery. Mercifully the good
God has saved you from what must have been a miserable marriage, for
there is more in Dixon's disappearance than we can see just yet."

Rose's tears dried with her gathering indignation. It had not occurred
to her to blame herself in any way; she felt rather in the position of
the ill-used heroine of a tragedy in real life.

"Then you think I ought to tell," she said a little sulkily.

"I certainly think your mistress ought to know exactly what happened.
You need not tell any one else, that I know of."

So Rose returned to the Court greatly crestfallen; and her account of
the quarrel, and Tom's vague threats about Dixon's character, put Mrs.
Webster on to the right clue as to the causes of his sudden flight. He
was found to have been guilty of repeated acts of dishonesty, so
cleverly concealed that, but for the fear that Tom would report him, he
might have gone on for years longer, respected and trusted by his
employers. As the time seemed ripe for flight, however, he had taken
with him the change of a big cheque that Mrs. Webster had given him to
cash on the Saturday, and which he had told her glibly that he could
not get cashed until the Monday. Each fresh revelation filled Rose
with misery and shame; and, behind all, was the one fact that she had
kept to herself: the