dians, and without
their knowledge. Yet each letter caused emotions which ran like a
storm-wind through the child's fragile being, and seemed to exhaust the
young life at its source. Then came the diphtheria, acting with
poisonous effect on a nervous system already overstrained.

And in the midst of the mother's anxieties there burst upon her the
sudden, incredible tale that Warkworth--to whom she herself was writing
regularly, and to whom Aileen, from her bed, was sending little
pencilled notes, sweetly meant to comfort a sighing lover--had been
entangling himself in London with another, a Miss Le Breton, positively
a nobody, as far as birth and position were concerned, the paid
companion of Lady Henry Delafield, and yet, as it appeared, a handsome,
intriguing, unscrupulous hussy, just the kind of hawk to snatch a morsel
from a dove's mouth--a woman, in fact, with whom a little
bread-and-butter girl like Aileen might very well have no chance.

Emily Lawrence's letter, in the tone of the candid friend, written after
her evening at Crowborough House, had roused a mingled anguish and fury
in the mother's breast. She lifted her eyes from it to look at Aileen,
propped up in bed, her head thrown back against the pillow, and her
little hands closed happily over Warkworth's letters; and she went
straight from that vision to write to the traitor.

The traitor defended and excused himself by return of post. He implored
her to pay no attention to the calumnious distortion of a friendship
which had already served Aileen's interests no less than his own. It was
largely to Miss Le Breton's influence that he owed the appointment which
was to advance him so materially in his career. At the same time he
thought it would be wise if Lady Blanche kept not only the silly gossip
that was going about, but even this true and innocent fact, from
Aileen's knowledge. One never knew how a girl would take such things,
and he would rather explain it himself at his own time.

Lady Blanche had to be content. And meanwhile the glory of the Mokembe
appointment was a strong factor in Aileen's recovery. She exulted over
it by day and night, and she wrote the letters of an angel.

The mother watched her writing them with mixed feelings. As to
Warkworth's replies, which she was sometimes allowed to see, Lady
Blanche, who had been a susceptible girl, and the heroine of several
"affairs," was secretly and strongly of opinion that men's love-letters,
at