the girl, proudly. "My parents
were aristocrats; so am I. Don't lecture me! Wrong or right, I always
felt thus, and always shall. If I have neither friends nor relatives, I
have at least my family and my name."

She talked thus, as she did sometimes, until they came to the
garden-gate of Farnwood Dell. There stood an elegant carriage. Christars
eyes brightened at the sight, and she trod with a more patrician air.

The maid--a parting bequest of Miss Meliora's, and who had long and
faithfully served at Woodford Cottage--came anxiously to communicate
that there were two ladies waiting. One of them she did not know; the
other was Mrs. Fludyer. "The latter would have disturbed Mrs. Rothesay,"
Hannah added, "but the other lady said, 'No; they would wait.'" Whereat
Olive's heart inclined towards "the other lady."

She went in and found, with Mrs. Fludyer, an ancient dame of large and
goodly presence. Aged though she seemed, her tall figure was not bent;
and dignity is to the old what grace is to the young. She stood a little
aside, and did not speak, but Olive, labouring under the weight of
Mrs. Mudyer's gracious inquiries, felt that the old lady's eyes were
carefully reading her face. At last Mrs. Fludyer made a motion of
introduction.

"No, I thank you," said the stranger, in the unmistakable northern
tongue, which, falling from poor Elspie's lips, had made the music
of Olive's childhood, and to which her heart yearned evermore. "Miss
Rothesay, will you, for your father's sake, let me shake hands with his
child? I am Mrs. Gwynne."

Thus it was that Olive received the first greeting of Harold's mother.

It startled--overpowered her; she had been so much agitated that day.
She was surprised into that rare weakness, a hearty, even childish burst
of tears. Mrs. Gwynne came up to her, with a softness almost motherly.

"You are pained, Miss Rothesay; you remember the past But I have now
come to hope that everything may be forgotten, save that I was your
father's old friend. For our Scottish friendship, like our pride,
descends from generation to generation. Fortune has made us neighbours,
let us then be friends. It is my earnest wish, and that of my son
Harold."

"Your son!" echoed Olive; and then, half-bewildered by all these
adventures, coincidences, and _eclaircissements_, she told how she
had already met him, and how that meeting had shown to her her old
companion's grave.

"That is strange, too. Never while she li