sure to readjust her outlook on life, free from the
ceaseless reminders that the place held for her.

Here in Monkshaven, it seemed as though Garth's personality informed the
very air she breathed. The great cliff where he had his dwelling frowned
at her from across the bay whenever she looked out of her window, his
name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle
of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him.
Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment
of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former
friendship had to be endured.

The invitation to join the Durwards in London had come at an opportune
moment, offering, as it did, a way of escape from the embarrassments
inseparable from the situation. Moreover, amid the distractions and
bustle of the great city it would be easier to forget for a little her
burden of pain and humiliation. There is so much time for thinking--and
for remembering--in the leisurely tranquillity of country life.

Sara would have accepted the invitation without hesitation, but that
there seemed to her certain reasons why her absence from Sunnyside just
now was inadvisable--reasons based on her loyalty to Doctor Dick and the
trust he had reposed in her.

For the last few weeks she had been perplexed and not a little worried
concerning Molly's apparent accession to comparative wealth. Certain
small extravagances in which the latter had recently indulged must have
been, Sara knew, beyond the narrow limits of her purse, and inquiry had
elicited from Selwyn the fact that she had received no addition to her
usual allowance.

Molly herself had light-heartedly evaded all efforts to gain her
confidence, and Sara had refrained from putting any direct question,
since, after all, she was not the girl's guardian, and her interference
might very well be resented.

She was uneasily conscious that for some reason or other Molly was in
a state of tension, alternating between abnormally high spirits and the
depths of depression, and the recollection of that unpleasant little
episode of her indebtedness to Lester Kent lingered disagreeably in
Sara's mind.

She had seen the man once, in Oldhampton High Street--Molly, at that
time still clothed in penitence, had pointed him out to her--and she had
received an unpleasing impression of a lean, hatchet face with deep-set,
dense-brown eyes, and of a mouth like that of a bird o