ng at the
Hall.

"Partly," replied Charrington gloomily, "but not altogether, I fear.
This restlessness is symptomatic. We must have Bruce Fraser out again.
But if we only could get track of Boyle it would greatly help. She wrote
yesterday to her great friend, Miss Robertson, who, more than anyone,
has kept in touch with him."

"Charrington," inquired Alan hesitatingly, "would you advise that he
should be looked up? Of course, you credit me with being perfectly
disinterested. I gave up my dream some time ago, you know."

"Oh, certainly, Ruthven, I know, but--"

"You fear I'm prejudiced. Well, I confess I am. I hate to think of a
girl like that having anything to do with a man unworthy of her, as from
what you have told me of him he must be."

"Unworthy!" cried Jack. "Did I ever call him unworthy? It depends upon
what you mean. He gambles. He has terrific passions; but he's a man
through and through, and he's clean and honourable."

"Ah," said Ruthven, drawing a deep breath, "then would to Heaven she
could find him! For this fretting is like a fever in her bones."

"At present, we can only wait for an answer to her letter."

And so they waited, each one of the little group vying with the other in
providing interest and amusement for the weary, restless, fevered girl.
Often, at the first, the old impatience would break out, mostly in her
talk with Charrington, at rare times to her hostess, too, but at such
times followed by quick penitence.

"Dear Lady Ruthven," she said one day after one of her little outbreaks,
"I wish I were like you. You are so sweetly good and so perfectly
self-controlled. Even I cannot wear out your patience. You must have
been born good and sweet."

For a few moments Lady Ruthven was silent, her mind going back swiftly
to long gone years. "No, dear," she said gently; "I have much to be
thankful for. It was a hard lesson and slowly learned, but He was
patient and bore long with me. And He is still bearing."

"Tell me how you learned," asked Iola timidly, and then Lady Ruthven
told her life story, without tears, without repinings, while Iola
wondered. That story Iola never forgot, and the influence of it never
departed from her. Never were the days quite so bad again, but every day
while she struggled to subdue her impatience even in thought, she kept
looking for word from across the sea with a longing so intense that all
in the house came to share it with her.

"Oh! if we only knew wh