t related to you. Try
to forgive me for being unselfish and acting in your interests
and not my own."

And again, with kind regards, he was hers sincerely.

"Poor, pretty little duffer!" he said, as he closed the envelope. "But
it's not real. Don't I know the sort of thing? She's simply bored to
death down there. And it's all my fault, anyhow. By Jove! I'll never
try to do any one a good turn again as long as I live. Fanny was
perfectly right."

The letter came by the second post, when Maisie was engaged in drearily
reading her employer to sleep after lunch.

It lay on her lap, but she kept her eyes from it and read on
intelligibly if not with expression.

The old lady dozed.

Maisie opened her letter. And before she could even have had time to put
up a hand to save herself, her Spanish castle was tumbling about her
ears. A curious giddy feeling seemed to catch at the back of her neck,
the room gave a sickening half-turn. She caught at her self-control.

"Not here. I mustn't faint here. Not with his letter in my hand."

She got out of the room somehow, and somehow she got into hat and jacket
and boots, put her quarter's salary in her purse, and walked out of the
front door and straight down the great drive that she had come up four
months ago with such bright hopes. She went to the station, and she took
a train, and she never stopped nor stayed till she was at home again.
She pushed past the frightened maid, and, pale and shabby, with
black-ringed eyes and dusty black gown, she burst into her mother's
room. The scent of eau-de-Cologne and bees'-wax and buttered toast met
her, and it was as the perfume of Paradise. Edward was there--but she
was in no mood to bother about Edward. She threw herself on her knees
and buried her face in the knitting on her mother's lap, and felt thin
arms go round her.

"It's nothing. I'm tired of it all. I've come home," was all she said.
But presently she reached out a hand to Edward, and he took it and held
it, as it were, absently, and the three sat by the fire and spoke little
and were content.

* * * * *

To her dying day Maisie will never forget the sense of peace, of
enfolding care, and love unchanging and unchangeable that came to her as
she woke next morning to find her mother standing by her bed with a cup
of tea in her hands.

"Oh, Mummy darling," she cried, throwing her arms round her mother and
nearly upsetting the tea, "I