"Ah, you are better, my dear," exclaimed the old housekeeper in great
relief. "Your swoon lasted so long that I was greatly alarmed; What
caused you to faint, my dear child?"

Faynie murmured some reply which she could not quite catch, for the
housekeeper was old and very deaf.

"Take this and go to sleep," she said, holding a soothing, quieting
draught to the girl's white, hot, parched lips. "You will awaken as well
as ever to-morrow."

Faynie did as she was requested, closing her eyes. She was glad when the
kindly old face was turned away and she was left alone--not to sleep,
but to think.

Of course it could not be Lester Armstrong who was Claire's suitor, for
he was poor, and her haughty stepmother would never encourage the suit
of a man who did not have wealth at his command.

If Faynie had but read the papers she would have known what was
transpiring, but, alas! she did not and was utterly unaware of the
strange turn of fortune's wheel which had occurred in the life of the
young assistant cashier to whom she had given the wealth of her love,
when he was poor.

Lying there, going over every detail of, the past, which seemed now but
the idle vagaries of a fleeting dream, she hardly knew, Heaven help her,
whether she still loved--or hated with all the strength of her
nature--Lester Armstrong.

Her heart would fill with yearning tenderness almost unbearable when she
looked back at the early days of that brief, sweet courtship.

How strong, noble, true and brave he had seemed--how kind of heart!

She had seen him pick up a little birdling that had fallen from its
nest, lying with a bruised wing in the dust of the roadside, and restore
it to the mother bird to be nursed back to health and life, and go out
of his way to rescue a butterfly that had fallen in the millpond.

It seemed like the distorted imagination of some diseased brain to bring
herself to the realization that this same gentle hand that had rescued
the robin and the butterfly had struck her down to death--that the kind,
earnest voice that had been wont to whisper nothing but words of
devotion and eternal love should fling out the vilest and bitterest of
oaths at her, because she was not the heiress he had taken her to be.

And without one tear, one bitter regret, he had consigned her to that
lonely grave and gone back to the life which he had declared he could
never live without her.

Where was he now? she wondered vaguely; then she laughe