lad for lost, and to resign herself to the 'inevitable.'

"She wrote to Mr. Alfred Whyte, Senior, but got no reply to her letter;
again and again she wrote with no better success. The little balance of
money left by her boy-husband was all gone. She began to sell off the
trifles of jewelry that he had given her.

"One morning the letter carrier left a letter with a London postmark
containing a bill of exchange for a hundred pounds, and not one word
besides.

"Had it come from her boy-husband, or from his father? She could not
tell.

"Well, to be brief, she never saw nor heard of him again. She lived
comfortably with her motherly old servant, enjoyed life thoroughly and
grew more beautiful every day, and this fool's paradise lasted as long
as her money did. Before her last dollar was gone, she saw the
advertisement in the _Pursuivant_ for a nursery governess, and answered
it, as has been told.

"This, my dear Cora, is the substance of the story told me by Ann White
on the day that I called on her in answer to her letter. What do you
think of it?" inquired Mr. Fabian when he had finished his narrative.

"I think the cruel neglect of her step-parents and the sufferings of her
childhood accountable for all her faults, and I feel very sorry for
her, notwithstanding that she seems to be a very heartless animal,"
replied Corona.

"That is the secret of the wonderful preservation of her youth and
beauty even up to this present time. Nothing wears a woman out as fast
as her own heart."

"You engaged her as you promised to do, but why did you introduce her at
Rockhold as a single girl, and why under an alias?" gravely inquired
Corona.

"I introduced her as a single girl at her own request because of her
extreme youth and her timidity. She naturally shrank from being known as
a discarded wife or a doubtful widow. Besides, I never did say she was a
single girl. I merely presented her as Rose Flowers, and left it to be
inferred from her baby face that she was so."

"But why Rose Flowers when her name was Ann White?"

"What a cross-questioner you are, Corona! but I will answer you. Again
it was by her own desire that I presented her as Rose Flowers, which was
not an alias, as she explained to me, but a part of her true name. She
had been baptized as Rose Anna Flowers, which was the maiden name of her
grandmother, her father's mother."

Cora might have asked another question, not so easily answered, if she
had known