t be so long without coming to see me again, dear heart," cried
Rachel Ray, standing outside her door.

"No, no, I will come soon," answered Betty. Johnstone placed her in the
saddle.

"A good gallop over the downs will bring back the colour to your cheek,"
he said softly. "You are so white and cold."

"There is something ill-omened in all here," said Betty with a slight
shiver.

"Here, Nora," cried Johnstone, flinging her a piece of gold. "This is to
make up for the loss of that silver sixpence."

The girl laughed loud and shrilly. "Ah! ah!" she cried after them. "The
good gentleman! the brave fellow! For this I would follow you! aye!
follow you, my lad, from Belton to Tyburn Hill!"

CHAPTER IV.

"It is then true, my Betty? And I am to wish you joy?" cried Mary Jones,
with both hands outstretched.

"It is true," answered Betty, her lips parted in a smile of sunshiny
happiness. "Congratulate me, Mary; yes, wish me joy, for there is no
happier woman to-day between the Northern and Southern seas."

"I am glad to see you so happy, dear child!" cried Mary affectionately,
but there was something pinched and starved in her voice. Ah, pity for
those who possess the capacity for love and yet must go hungry to their
dying day!

This odd want is none the less bitter that it meets with scant sympathy
in this hard world. In the breast of many an unsought woman lies a
wealth of wasted treasure, treasure which no one has cared to seek, and
yet what a treasure it might have been!

Mary Jones's heart had grown somewhat starved, but it was the heart of a
loving woman still, and when the bright sunshine of her young friend's
happiness shed its light on her soul, it awakened an echo of old dead
days, and swelled it with sympathy.

"Sit down, sweet one," she said, drawing Betty down on the sofa beside
her. "Tell me all about it. When did he ask you to be his wife?"

"This morning, Mary, only this morning; but it seems as if years had
passed since then."

"And what says Mr. Ives? Does he welcome the stranger who takes from him
his only child?"

"Not far, Mary--but two miles away--and my father is always to live with
me, if he so will it, so says Mr. Johnstone."

"But is he pleased?" asked Mary, with a little persistence.

"Yes, he is well pleased; he already loves him as a son. Mary, perhaps
the thing that most readily won my heart was his reverence and tender
courtesy to my father."

"I can believe it, Betty