rning."

Joyce, to her surprise, is led through a very well-appointed chamber,
evidently unused, to a smaller but scarcely less carefully arranged
apartment beyond. The first is so plainly a room not in daily use, that
she turns involuntarily to her companion.

"Is this your room, Mrs. Connolly?"

"For the night, me dear," says that excellent woman mysteriously.

"You have changed your room to suit me. You mean something," says the
girl, growing crimson, and feeling as if her heart were going to burst.
"What is it?"

"No, no, Miss! No, indeed!" confusedly. "But, Miss Joyce, I'll say this,
that 'tis eight year now since Misther Monkton came here, an' many's the
good turn he's done me since he's been me lord's agint. An' that's
nothing at all, Miss, to the gratitude I bear toward yer poor father,
the ould head o' the house. An' d'ye think when occasion comes I
wouldn't stand up an' do the best I could for one o' yer blood? Fegs,
I'll take care that it won't be in the power of any one to say a word
agin you."

"Against me?"

"You're young, Miss. But there's people ould enough to have sinse an'
charity as haven't it. I can see ye couldn't get home to-night through
that rain, though I'm not sayin'"--a little spitefully--"but that he
might have managed it. Still, faith, 'twas bad thravellin' for man or
baste," with a view to softening down her real opinion of Beauclerk's
behavior. How can she condemn him safely? Is he not my lady's own
brother? Is not my lord the owner of the very ground on which the inn is
built, of the farm a mile away, where her cows are chewing the cud by
this time in peace and safety?

"You have changed your room to oblige me," says Joyce, still with that
strange, miserable look in her eyes.

"Don't think about that, Miss Joyce, now. An' don't fret yerself about
anything else, ayther; sure ye can remimber that I'm to yer back
always."

She bridles, and draws up her ample figure to its fullest height.
Indeed, looking at her, it might suggest itself to any reasonable being
that even the forlornest damsel with any such noble support might well
defy the world.

But Joyce is not to be so easily consoled. What is support to her? Who
can console a torn heart? The day has been too eventful! It has overcome
her courage. Not only has she lost faith in her own power to face the
angry authorities at home, she has lost faith, too, in one to whom,
against her judgment, she had given more of her thoughts