d she went
and sat in it and touched with reverent, loving hand the books and
papers over which he had been wont to bend. She stood before his
portrait and gazed at it with tear-dimmed eyes, and only the
consciousness of the love she had borne him enabled her to bear his
absence. As she passed through the hall the newly risen moon was
pouring in through the tall window, and, followed by Donald and Bess,
who had not left her for a moment, she opened the great hall door and
went on to the terrace, and walking to the end, stood and looked
towards the ruined chapel in which her father had buried his treasure.

Up to this moment she had been buoyed up by excitement and the joy and
pleasure of her return to the old house; but suddenly there fell a
cloud-like depression upon her; she was conscious of an aching void, a
lack of something which robbed her heart of all its joy. She had no
need to ask herself what it was: she knew too well. Her old home had
come back to her, she was the mistress of a large fortune, she stood,
as it were, bathed in the sunshine of prosperity; but her heart fell
cold and dead, and the sunshine, bright as it was, well-nigh dazzling,
indeed, had no warmth in it. She was a great heiress now, would no
doubt soon be surrounded by friends. She had been poor and well-nigh
friendless that day Stafford had taken her in his arms and kissed her
for the first time; but, ah, how happy she had been!

Was it possible, could Fate be so cruel as to decree, that she should
never be happy again, never lose the aching pain which racked her heart
at every thought of him! She put the fear from her with a feeling of
shame and helplessness. She _would_ forget the man who left her for
another woman, would not let thought of him cast a shadow over her life
and dominate it. No doubt by this time he had quite forgotten her, or,
if he remembered her, recalled the past with a feeling of annoyance
with which a man regards a passing flirtation, pleasant enough while it
lasted, but of which he did well to be a little ashamed.

She would not look in the direction of the trees under which he had
stood on the night of the day she had first seen him; and she went in
with a forced cheerfulness to tell Jessie, listening with wide-open
eyes, of some of the strange things which had happened to her. All the
time she was talking, she was beset by a longing to ask Jessie about
Brae Wood and the Ormes; but she crushed down the idea; and Jessi