"

"Perhaps some other evening while he is here you will be able to come
up," said Mrs. Trelyon in her gentle way. "You know you ought to come
and see how your pupil is getting on. He writes me such nice letters
now; and I fancy he is working very hard at his studies, though he
says nothing about it."

"I am very glad to hear that," Wenna said in a low voice.

Trelyon did come to the Hall for a few days, but he kept away from the
village, and was seen by no one of the Rosewarnes. But on the
Christmas morning, Mabyn Rosewarne, being early about, was told that
Mrs. Trelyon's groom wished to see her, and, going down, she found the
man, with a basket before him.

"Please, miss, Mr. Trelyon's compliments, and would you take the
flowers out of the cotton-wool and give them to Miss Rosewarne?"

"Oh, won't I?" said Mabyn, opening the basket at once, and carefully
getting out a bouquet of camellias, snowdrops and sweet violets. "Just
you wait a minute, Jakes, for I've got a Christmas-box for you."

Mabyn went up stairs as rapidly as was consistent with the safety of
the flowers, and burst into her sister's room: "Oh, Wenna, look at
this! Do you know who sent them? Did you ever see anything so lovely?"

For a second the girl seemed almost frightened; then her eyes grew
troubled and moist, and she turned her head away. Mabyn put them
gently down and left the room without a word.

The Christmas and the New Year passed without any message from Mr.
Roscorla; and Mabyn, though she rebelled against the bondage in which
her sister was placed, was glad that she was not disturbed by angry
letters. About the middle of January, however, a brief note arrived
from Jamaica.

"I cannot let such a time go by," Mr. Roscorla wrote, "whatever may be
our relations, without sending you a friendly word. I do hope the new
year will bring you health and happiness, and that we shall in time
forget the angry manner in which we parted and all the circumstances
leading to it."

She wrote as brief a note in reply, at the end of which she hoped he
would forgive her for any pain he had suffered through her. Mabyn was
rejoiced to find that the correspondence--whether it was or was not
meant on his part to be an offer of reconciliation--stopped there.

And again the slow days went by until the world began to stir with the
new spring-time--the saddest time of the year to those who live much
in the past. Wenna was out and about a great deal, being con