This discovery--natural enough when one began to think over it, but
incredible at first, astounded us all. For Maud--well was it that the
little Louise seated in her lap hid and controlled in some measure the
violent agitation of poor Auntie Maud.

Ay--Maud loved him. Perhaps she had guessed the secret cause of his
departure, and love creates love often times. Then his brave
renunciation of rank, fortune, even of herself--women glory in a moral
hero--one who has strength to lose even love, and bear its loss, for
the sake of duty or of honour. His absence, too, might have done
much:--absence which smothers into decay a rootless fancy, but often
nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.
Ay--Maud loved him. How, or why, or when, at first no one could
tell--perhaps not even herself; but so it was, and her parents saw it.

Both were deeply moved--her brother likewise.

"Father," he whispered, "have I done wrong? I did not know--how could
I guess?"

"No, no--my son. It is very strange--all things just now seem so
strange. Maud, my child,"--and John roused himself out of a long
silence into which he was falling,--"go, and take Louise to her mother."

The girl rose, eager to get away. As she crossed the room--the little
creature clinging round her neck, and she clasping it close, in the
sweet motherliness of character which had come to her so early--I
thought--I hoped--

"Maud!" said John, catching her hand as she passed him by--"Maud is not
afraid of her father?"

"No,"--in troubled uncertainty--then with a passionate decision, as if
ashamed of herself--

"No!"

She leaned over his chair-back and kissed him--then went out.

"Now--Guy."

Guy told, in his own frank way, all the history of himself and William
Ravenel; how the latter had come to America, determined to throw his
lot for good or ill, to sink or swim, with Maud's brother--chiefly, as
Guy had slowly discovered, because he was Maud's brother. At last--in
the open boat, on the Atlantic, with death the great revealer of all
things staring them in the face--the whole secret came out. It made
them better than friends--brothers.

This was Guy's story, told with a certain spice of determination too,
as if--let his father's will be what it might, his own, which had now
also settled into the strong "family" will, was resolute on his
friend's behalf. Yet when he saw how grave, nay sad, the father sat,
he became humble ag