a clever girl she spoke in
a rather ignorant way.

"How queer she is!" he said to himself; "but never mind, she will tell
me all to-morrow. I shall win her; it will be my delight to guard her,
to help her, and if necessary to save her. She is under someone's thumb;
but I will find out whose."

His thoughts travelled to Bertha Keys. He remembered that strange time
when he met Florence at the railway station at Hamslade. Why had she
spent the day there? Why had Bertha sent her a parcel? He felt
disturbed, and he wandered into another room. This was the library of
the house. Some papers were lying about. Amongst others was the first
number of the _General Review_. With a start Trevor took it up. He would
look through Florence's article. That clever paper had been largely
criticised already; but, strange to say, he had not read it. He sank
into a chair and read it slowly over. As he did so, his heart beat at
first loud, then with heavy throbs. A look of pain, perplexity, and
weariness came into his eyes. One sentence in particular he read not
only once, but twice, three times. It was a strange sentence; it
contained in it the germ of a very poisonous thought. In these few words
was the possibility of a faith being undermined, and a hope being
destroyed. It puzzled him. He had the queer feeling that he had read it
before. He repeated it to himself until he knew it by heart. Then he put
the paper down, and soon afterwards he went to his mother, and told her
he was going home.

"I will send a brougham for you; I am not very well," he said.

She looked into his face, and was distressed at the expression she saw
in his eyes.

"All right, Maurice dear; I shall be ready in an hour. I just want to
meet a certain old friend, and to talk to that pretty girl Miss Aylmer.
I will find out why she does not come to see us."

"Don't worry her. I would rather you didn't," said Trevor.

His mother looked at him again, and her heart sank.

"Is it possible he has proposed for her, and she will not accept him?"
thought the mother; and then she drew her proud little head up, and a
feeling of indignation filled her heart. If Florence was going to treat
her boy, the very light of her eyes, cruelly, she certainly need expect
no mercy from his mother.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

AN ADMIRABLE ARRANGEMENT.

Trevor took his departure, and the gay throng at Mrs. Simpson's laughed
and joked and made merry.

Florence had now worked herself i