ose days the railway passed no nearer to Farlingford than Ipswich,
and before the arrival of their train at that station Miriam had
thoroughly elucidated the situation. She had discovered that she was not
expected at the rectory, and that Septimus had never offered of his
own free will the home which he now kindly pressed upon her--two truths
which the learned historian fondly imagined to be for ever locked up in
his own heart, which was a kind one and the heart of a gentleman.

Miriam also learned that Septimus was very poor. She did not need to be
informed that he was helpless. Her instinct had told her that long
ago. She was only nineteen, but she looked at men and women with those
discerning grey eyes, in which there seemed to lurk a quiet light
like the light of stars, and saw right through them. She was woman
enough--despite the apparent inconsequence of the schoolroom, which
still lent a vagueness to her thoughts and movements--to fall an easy
victim to the appeal of helplessness. Years, it would appear, are of no
account in certain feminine instincts. Miriam had probably been woman
enough at ten years of age to fly to the rescue of the helpless.

She did not live permanently at the rectory, but visited her mother from
time to time, either in England, or at one of the foreign resorts of
idle people. But the visits, as years went by, became shorter and rarer.
At twenty-one Miriam came into a small fortune of her own, left by her
father in the hands of executors, one of whom was that John Turner, the
Paris banker, who had given Dormer Colville a letter of introduction to
Septimus Marvin. The money was sorely needed at the rectory, and Miriam
drew freely enough on John Turner.

"You are an extravagant girl," said that astute financier to her, when
they met at the house of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, at Royan, in France.
"I wonder what you spend it on! But I don't trouble my head about it.
You need not explain, you understand. But you can come to me when you
want advice or help. You will find me--in the background. I am a fat
old man, in the background. Useful enough in my way, perhaps, even to a
pretty girl with a sound judgment."

There were many, who, like Loo Barebone, reflected that there were other
worlds open to Miriam Liston. At first she went into those other worlds,
under the flighty wing of her mother, and looked about her there.
Captain and Mrs. Duncan belonged to the Anglo-French society, which had
spru