s return, and drooped and died?"

Miss Bright is making a long pause. Her large, rough face is heavy and
sorrowful. She has quite forgotten her good news for the moment, has
forgotten her friend kneeling beside her, has forgotten all save the
memory of the sorrow which seemed to have terminated all of joy the
world held for her. Hazel steals a gentle arm round the bowed neck, and
kisses the worn, absent face as softly and soothingly as though it were
some beautiful child's. The touch recalls the wandering thoughts,
Brightie clasps the hand that she is holding in her own more tightly,
and goes on:--

"Well, to be sure, and I haven't told you the news after all, dearie! It
is that Tom has come back. He has made a great deal of money, and got
quite reformed and come back. And he has bought back the old house, and
now has just found out my address and wants me to go down and live with
him; wants me to forgive him, he says, and let him be a comfort to me. I
have, of course, nothing to forgive, except for Janie's sake."

"Oh, Brightie, what good, good news it is! I am so very glad. You will
at last have some rest, and not be obliged to try your eyes over that
fine sewing, and be taken proper care of, and have all sorts of nice
things. I am so glad! How soon can you go, dear?--to-morrow? I should
like you to go to-morrow."

Hazel began very bravely, went on unsteadily, and finally ended by
laying her head down on Brightie's broad shoulder, fairly sobbing.

"I should like you to go to-morrow! Why, Hazel, Hazel, my tender-hearted
little pet, are you crying, then? Because you are sure I am not going
to-morrow? Neither to-morrow nor any other time. Don't you know I could
not leave you without a friend in this great, careless world?"

Brightie's words are news to herself as she speaks them. She had not
considered the possibility of such a thing before. Here was the
longed-for home open to her, waiting to receive her again. Her one
relation, her own nephew, the same merry-faced Tom of old, dear days,
writing to her begging her to show her forgiveness and go to him to be
cherished all the days of her life. And all this must be
foregone--renounced. She must give it all up, and when Tom comes in two
days, as he said he should, to fetch her, she must withstand his
pleading and send him back alone, and never see the sweet garden and
fresh sea again.

It is one of the cruellest days of bitter March weather. Yet early in
the day af