because I want to
help you."

"Yes, I know you are very good," replied Fay, more gently.

"If you would only trust us, and give us your confidence," he
continued, earnestly. "Aunt Jeanie is not a woman of the world, but
she has plenty of common sense; and forgive me if I say you are very
young, and may need guidance. You can not hide from us that you are
very unhappy, and that the husband you have left is still dear to
you--" But Fay could hear no more; she rose with a low sob and left
the room, and Fergus's little homily on wifely forbearance was not
finished.

It was so each time that he reopened the subject. Fay would listen up
to a certain point, and seem touched by the young minister's kindness
and sympathy, but he could not induce her to open her heart to him.
She was unhappy--yes, she allowed that; she had no wish to leave her
husband, but circumstances had been too strong for her, and nothing
would induce her to admit that she had done wrong.

"Who would have thought that little creature had so much tenacity and
will," Fergus said to himself, with a sort of vexed admiration, after
one of these conversations; "why, Lilian is a big woman compared to
Mrs. St. Clair, and yet my lassie has not a tithe of her spirit. Well,
I'll bide my time; but it will not be my fault if I fail to have a
grip of her yet."

But the spring sunshine touched the ragged tops of Ben-muich-dhui and
Ben-na-hourd before Fergus got his "grip."

He was taking his porridge one morning, with an English paper lying
beside his plate, when he suddenly started, and seemed all at once
very much absorbed in what he was reading. A few minutes afterward,
when Fay was stooping over her boy, who lay on the carpet beside her,
sprawling in the sunshine, he raised his eyes, and looked at her
keenly from under his bent brows; but he said nothing, and shortly
afterward went off to his study; and when he was alone, he spread out
the paper before him, and again studied it intently.

A paragraph in the second column had attracted his attention--

"A reward of two hundred pounds is offered to any person who
can give such information of Lady Redmond and her child as may
lead to them being restored to their friends. All
communications to be forwarded to Messrs. Green and
Richardson, Lincoln's Inn."

And just above--

"Fay, your husband entreats you to return to your home, or at
least relieve his anxiety with respect to you an