sharp twinge of remorse, when he went round to Galvaston House
to take leave of his patient, and Mr. Gaythorne put a slip of folded
paper in his hand.

"I am an old man," he said,--and his thin fingers held the young
doctor's hand in a firm grasp,--"and I am using an old man's privilege.
I know what a hard, up-hill fight life is at present to you, and I
should like to ease the burden a little," and to Marcus's intense and
overwhelming surprise he found it was a cheque for five hundred pounds.

Marcus never could remember what he said, but his first attempt to
stammer a few words of gratitude for this unexpected and magnificent
gift was promptly checked.

"It is all very well," observed Alwyn rather gloomily when Olivia told
him of his father's munificence. She had shed tears of joy when Marcus
had shown her the cheque.

"My father has settled up accounts with Dr. Luttrell after his own
fashion, but he has not paid my debts." And then in a deeply moved
voice, "There are some debts that cannot be paid. 'I was a stranger
and ye took me in.' How many doors do you suppose, Mrs. Luttrell,
would have opened to a starving outcast that Christmas night?" and then
his blue eyes flashed with an expression of intense feeling that became
him well.

"I shall never be able to repay either of you. I shall never try," he
went on. "Do you know, as I lay on that doorstep too weak and stiff to
move, and the doctor bent over me, it seemed to me, in my dazed
condition, as though it were the face of a beneficent angel. God bless
you both, for you have made a man of me." And then he lifted the kind,
womanly hand to his lips.

Olivia missed her friends at Galvaston House, sorely, but she had more
time to devote to Greta.

One day they had a pleasant outing together. Greta, who still hankered
after her old home, had proposed that she and Olivia should go down to
Medhurst together.

"It is only an hour's journey," she observed, "And there is a dear old
inn where we could have tea. And just now it will be at its best. The
horse-chestnuts will be out in the Grange garden, and the pink and
white may at Ivy Dene." And Olivia consented readily. But though she
thoroughly enjoyed the little expedition, and fell in love with
Medhurst and the old church, the longed-for visit was only productive
of disappointment to Greta.

Ivy Dene, in Olivia's eyes, was not a desirable abode. The rooms were
low and cramped, and had a mouldy, disu