It represented Winefride in a white gown, standing against a background of dark yew, with her hands full of wild flowers, and her fair hair uncovered.

The photograph had been taken in the fountain garden at the imperious request of her lover, who had caused an expert to come over from Paris and execute the order.

Edith's glance at it, even in the failing light, brought it back distinctly to her memory. A moment later, the sound of a footstep made her turn; and turning, she came face to face with, as it seemed to her, the original of the photograph.

Her start was succeeded instantly by the realisation of Thekla's identity, and she thought she had never seen so fair a face.

Sorrow, or discipline, had softened Thekla's expression, and the long-lashed blue eyes were almost pathetic in the appeal they made; her childish, oval face was thinner and paler than before her probation.

'I'm very, very glad you came yourself. I feel as if I knew you. Bernard wrote to us about you before he sailed.'

'I only saw him for one moment,' said Edith, gently. Mr. Ferrys brought him.'

'I know, I know. But you are a friend of his Michael's; and Bernard loved Michael better than anyone in the world, except Winefride.' She uttered the names of her dead brother and sister simply and without pretence of hesitation.

"And you

"Oh no-not me. I don't mean they didn't love me-oh no. I was Winefride's only sister, but they were older; I was always— the odd one,' she said, with a sound between laughter and tears, not complaining, but infinitely tender. She looked at Edith with the awe of a young maiden for an older woman who has already fulfilled an ideal. 'But Bernard knew how much Michael thought of you, and he thought you splendid, himself, even though he only saw you for that moment.'

It needed only a smile from Edith to turn Thekla's awe into shy adoration.

'Will you come to Mamma now, please?' she said. "There isn't anything to wait for. She doesn't know anybody.'

Lady Gryffydd lay in the great four-poster from which she could see the cot in the corner which had once belonged to Bernard, but she was taking no heed of that now, nor of any other material object.

Her pale blue eyes were dull and glassy, her weak mouth was drawn painfully to one side, and her large face was of a livid, deathly hue. The arm and white hand that lay on the red silk quilt were rigid, and save for the noisy, laboured breathing, she might have been a corpse.

Mrs. Loveden was kneeling by the bedside of her sister, weeping and saying her rosary, while in the background the old Welsh doctor whispered to the stout countrywoman, Olwen, who had brought up Lady Gryffydd's children; she had now for many years supervised the scanty household, and become both maid and housekeeper for her gentle mistress; and she watched the entry of the new nurse with jealous eyes.

An hour later Edith, in nursing cap and apron, had taken charge of the situation, and was tending her unconscious patient, supplementing the clumsy application of the ordered remedies by her own skilled methods; while the housekeeper-transformed, by the relief of the discovery that banishment was not to be her portion, into a willing slave-made mustard poultices and ice-bags under her friendly and authoritative direction.

The old doctor, expressing thankfulness, withdrew for muchneeded rest; and Mrs. Loveden, her anxieties soothed, was already sleeping heavily upon the sofa in her own room, where Sims alternately sniffed and unpacked, without disturbing her mistress in the least.

And Thekla, poor child, with a heavy burden of responsibility and terror lifted from her slender shoulders, knelt in the chapel offering her thanksgivings, and yet unable to keep the sorrowful amaze that so much grief should be her portion out of the still childish mind; while her lips mechanically repeated familiar prayers.

'The world is full of sorrow and disappointment and anxiety,' she thought, resting her fair brow, that ached with crying, against her little supplicating hands. Oh God, isn't it enough? First Winnie and then Bernard. Oh, let poor Mamma get well. But not if she is to suffer. Oh, not if it is only to pain and grief. how can I be left all alone? What am I to do in the world? I tried to leave it. Winefride gone, and Bernard, oh Bernard! and now poor Mamma-'

But

Then she thought of Edith with the eternal hope, springing in the midst of grief, which belongs to youth; idealising her as an angel sent with healing in her wings, and resting mentally upon the grave and steady sweetness of the older woman's calm presence.

'She will help me. Bernard wrote that she was beautiful, with the beauty that he had imagined as the beauty of the saints and queens of long ago. Severe and noble and serene. He saw her only once, and when he wrote I wondered if he had fallen a little in love with her at first sight. Oh God, forgive me! Bernard, darling, darling! He was far, far away from all thoughts of earthly love. Oh, why should I cry like this, when he's gone to Winefride, who loved him best of all, and my work has been given to me? To stay here and take care of poor Mamma. I will be brave, I will, I will. Oh God, what shall I do?'

She tried to keep her wandering thoughts fixed once more upon the familiar words she was uttering, and the incessant repetition of them presently soothed her nerves and spirits, so that when at length she rose from her knees and stole upstairs to her mother's room her face was calm, though stained with weeping.

Edith met her at the door, with the smile that charmed and the look that at once claimed and inspired confidence.

'Do you know she is better? I think she is coming to herself a little. It's doubly important that you and Mrs. Loveden should get a good night's rest, and have cheerful faces to show her in the morning, in case she should be able to recognise you.'

By the following day Lady Gryffydd had partially recovered. She was still unable to move, and one side was paralysed; but her eyes showed consciousness, and the housekeeper was gratified by an evident preference for her ministrations.

There was even a murmur of fondness as her daughter bent to kiss her; and Thekla's spirits bounded up with the elasticity natural to her age and disposition.

She eagerly begged to be allowed to accompany Edith on her walk, and invited her to come to the grove and see the monastery, now in process of building.

'Are you sure you would not rather take your walk alone? I know you ought to have rest as well as exercise,' she said anxiously. 'But it would be a great, great pleasure to me to be allowed to come with you.'

Edith assured her that she preferred companionship when she could get it.

'But you must be very tired. You have been up all night.' 'No, I am used to it. I shall sleep this afternoon, and all the better for this fine mountain air. How beautiful-how beautiful it is !'

She stood on the terrace, looking over the panorama of hills and valleys and river that was stretched before her in the brilliant February sunshine of the wild west country. Distant torrents showed like slender white threads in dark gullies where black yews glistened in the sun. Little white cottage homes on the mountain-side sent straight slender spires of blue smoke up against the brown of the leafless woods in the still air. Cries and laughter of children rose from the school playground in the valley to the height on which they stood, and the whistling of the ploughman at the home-farm was clear and shrill. The hint of spring in the preceding afternoon had become a promise with the brightness of the morning. The crocuses expanded their golden hearts on the terrace garden, and clumps of daffodils glowed in their fresh tints of pale clear yellow and orange.

In

The flowering ribes still filled dark corners with rose-coloured bloom. The air was fragrant with the scent of good moist earth, newly freed from cleansing frost and melting snow, yielding itself to the warm and wholesome influence of sun and west wind. the background rose the mighty solid structure of old masonry and giant blocks of stone, embraced by a tracery of brown clinging stems and tendrils that would presently hang out curtains of fresh green foliage and pure blossom.

Last year's nests of house-martins and swifts clung to the walls beneath sheltering projections, and Thekla showed them and said mournfully Bernard would never have them touched, and now I never will '; and Edith remembered that this child of nineteen, in her shabby black serge frock, was also the owner of a great estate and of the ancient castle which dominated it.

They walked along the terrace and through the grove, which was a wild enclosure of rock and gorse and rough pasture, beautified by old forest trees, until they reached presently a space, very slightly sloping to the south, where, in an old orchard, guarded on its outskirts by a few giant oaks, and with a little stream bubbling gaily along the lower boundary-the ruins of the old church and monastery had lain untouched for so many years.

Now the short massive columns had been lifted from their mossy beds, the outline of the ancient buildings carefully traced and followed, and the new walls raised to a height of some fifteen or twenty feet.

Since it was noon the workmen were lunching as merrily as

the children were playing in the field below. They sat about on the mounds which might be graves, or buried masonry, and brought the wholesome breath of life and human speech into the deserted place.

Thekla showed Edith where the stone coffin of the last abbot had been unwittingly disturbed, and where human bones had been perforce disinterred; and how magnificent were the proportions of the church which had once towered over the monastery.

'It is Michael's monument to Winnie,' she said, in her soft, childish voice; 'Bernard said it was that, and something more. Perhaps Bernard would have come here and lived always among the hills and the people he loved, and yet fulfilled his vocation. But God willed otherwise. Still, the work will be finished, for before Bernard left he told me it had all been settled and the money provided.'

'I wonder,' said Edith, hesitating,' that Michael did not come to see it before he sailed.'

face.

Thekla shook her head, and a faint colour rose in her fair

'He has never been here since my Winnie died. I suppose he could not bear to come,' she said; and a silence fell between them.

'It is hard on the child. No one knows that better than I do,' said Mrs. Loveden, piteously. But what can I do? To break up my little home and come down here would be a great misery to me, and a very doubtful advantage to Thekla, who would thus lose her sole opportunity of coming to London at all. And it is not as though the dear child were like Winefride, who was so very gentle, and, as you know, clung to me always since Winefride's death the poor lady had unconsciously magnified this dependence of her favourite niece upon herself. But Thekla has a much stronger character, and she will be of age in a year and six weeks, when no one in the world will be able to interfere with her, for she comes into everything that belonged to her poor brother. Her mother and my brother Ambrose are only trustees till then, and Ambrose sees no reason why everything here shouldn't go on as usual without any interference from him. The agent here has been trusted for years, and indeed there was never a more reliable, worthy creature living; and Winefride and Thekla always seemed to me to know the ins and outs of the estate just as well as Bernard did. What could I