ok charge of the household, and the
simple habits of the past were given up. Old servants were pronounced
incompetent and dismissed; and when Elsie protested against these
changes, her brother and his wife dropped the mask of civility.

There is no need to go over all the details of the wretched story. Old
Mr. Kilner, growing more feeble every day, suffered himself to be guided
entirely by Robert and Bertha, and Elsie soon found that his heart was
turned away from her. Then came the end. The will was read, and
everything was left to Robert Kilner.

"But Elsie cannot say that she is not provided for," said Bertha to her
friends. "Her godmother--old Mrs. Hardie, you know--left her a hundred
and fifty a year. Quite a fortune, is it not?"

Turned out of the old home, Elsie had come straight to London, and had
sought shelter at a boarding-school where a friend of hers was a
teacher. Then, after a careful search of six months, a friend had
directed her to this quiet house, and she had gratefully settled here.
She welcomed solitude as one who has so many things to think over, that
it is indispensable.

There was a letter grasped tightly in her hand, as she stood looking out
of the window. It had come from the rector's wife, who had been her
mother's friend in happy days gone by. The old lady had written to say
that there were wild doings at the Manor, and the country-side was
ringing with tales of Robert's extravagance and dissipation. The Kilners
had never been wealthy; there was just enough to keep up the old house
in quiet comfort, and that was all.

"Robert will soon come to an end of everything," wrote the clergyman's
wife with the frankness of long friendship. "We have heard that he was
deeply involved before he came to live at the Manor. Bertha is beginning
to look sad and worn and crestfallen. People have looked coldly on her
since you went away, and if she ever had any influence over her husband,
she has lost it now. The air is full of unwholesome rumours. I am glad
that you are no longer here, my dear child."

The letter had given Elsie a cruel pleasure--a pleasure which was so
hideous that her better self could not endure the sight of it. It was
only the darker side of her nature which could entertain this hateful
joy for a moment. And so the battle began in her heart on that sunny
March afternoon.

There were certain outer influences which seemed to act upon that inward
strife. The sky helped her with glimp