and down the room,
while Bessie next took the picture to which she bore so striking a
likeness.

"It is grandmother! _It is!_" she exclaimed. "He must have had two
taken, one for himself and one for her. Is she not lovely?"

"She is like you," Hannah replied, "and it was this resemblance which
started me so when I first saw you this morning. Oh, Bessie, my child,
your coming to me has cleared away all the clouds, and I can make
restitution at last, for _you_ are the rightful heir of the money I have
saved so carefully--heir of that and everything."

"I do not think I understand you," Bessie said, and then Hannah handed
her the will, executed in Wales, about a year before Joel Rogers' death,
and in which he gave all he had to his sister Elizabeth and her heirs
forever.

"Still I do not quite see it. Explain it to me, Grey," Bessie said,
with a perplexed look on her face.

Thus importuned, Grey sat down beside her, and, as well as he could,
explained everything, and told her of the gold, to which his aunt had
added interest every year, so that the heirs, when found, should have
their own, and of the shares in the slate quarries in Wales, dividends
on which must have amounted to quite a fortune by this time, and all of
which was hers, when she was proven to be the lawful heir of Elizabeth
Baldwin, sister of Joel Rogers.

"Yes, I understand now," she said, with a quivering lip, and the great
tears rolling down her cheeks. "There is money for me somewhere, but,
oh, I wish it had come in father's life-time. We were so poor then;
but," she added, as a bright smile broke over her face, "I am glad for
you, Grey, that I shall not be a penniless bride."

Did she not then appreciate the position, or see the gulf which her
relationship to the dead man had built between them? If not, he must
tell her, and rising again to his feet, and standing over her, Grey
began with a choking voice:

"Bessie, you do not seem even to suspect that, in the eyes of the world,
the fact that you are Joel Rogers' grand-niece ought to separate you
from me. Don't you know that the blood of your kinsman is on my
grandfather's hands, and does that make no difference with you?"

"Difference!" she repeated. "No, why should it? Oh, Grey, you are not
going to give me up because of that? I was not to blame;" and in
Bessie's voice there was such a pleading pathos, that when she stretched
her hands toward him, Grey took her in his arms, feeling that all