an air of cheerful good-nature he thanked his brother, and carefully
deposited the draft in his pocket-book.

After having absolved his conscience by what he considered not only a
good action, but one of sufficient magnitude to save his soul, Mark
intimated to his brother that he might now leave him--he had nothing
further to say; a permission which Algernon was not slow to accept.

As he groped his way through the dark gallery that led from the miser's
chamber, a door was opened cautiously at the far end of the passage, and
a female figure, holding a dim light in her hand, beckoned to him to
approach.

Not without reluctance Algernon obeyed the summons, and found himself in
the centre of a large empty apartment which had once been the saloon,
and face to face with Mrs. Hurdlestone.

Elinor carefully locked the door, and placing the light on the
mantel-shelf, stood before the astonished Algernon, like some
memory-haunting phantom of the past.

Yes. It was Elinor--his Elinor; but not a vestige remained of the grace
and beauty that had won his youthful heart. So great was the change
produced by years of hopeless misery, that Algernon, in the haggard and
careworn being before him, did not at first recognise the object of his
early love. Painfully conscious of this humiliating fact, Elinor at
length said--"I do not wonder that Mr. Algernon Hurdlestone has
forgotten me; I once was Elinor Wildegrave."

A gush of tears--of bitter, heart-felt, agonizing tears--followed this
avowal, and her whole frame trembled with the overpowering emotions
which filled her mind.

Too much overcome by surprise to speak, Algernon took her hand, and for
a few minutes looked earnestly in her altered face. What a mournful
history of mental and physical suffering was written there! That look of
tender regard recalled the blighted hopes and wasted affections of other
years; and the wretched Elinor, unable to control her grief, bowed her
head upon her hands, and groaned aloud.

"Oh, Elinor!--and is it thus we meet? You might have been happy with me.
How could you, for the paltry love of gain, become the wife of Mark
Hurdlestone?"

"Alas, Algernon! necessity left me no alternative in my unhappy choice.
I was deceived--cruelly deceived. Yet would to God that I had begged my
bread, and dared every hardship--been spurned from the presence of the
rich, and endured the contempt of the poor, before I consented to become
his wife."

"But what s