she had given him a rose.

"A rose for constancy," she said, as he held it in his hand and inhaled
the perfume. "You deserve it."

"Shall my constancy be rewarded?" he asked eagerly.

"What a handsome boy you are!" she laughed. "I wonder will it be
rewarded?"

"Why do you tease me?" he asked. "If you could read my heart----?"

"I can read it in your eyes. I know every word they say. Come inside and
sing to me."

In his fine tenor voice he sang, at her request, Tosti's "Good-bye."
That was his farewell to Sylvia Jackson.

The following morning Mr. Jackson failed to appear at business. This was
an almost unprecedented event, and caused quite a flutter of excitement
in the office; but it was not until the afternoon that Desmond learned
the reason. He was summoned into the Chief's office to find Mr.
Jackson, grey-faced and worn, a broken man.

"I have ill news, my boy," he said very kindly to Desmond. "Sylvia has
run away with Custance."

Desmond made no reply. Suddenly the world had altered for him; he had
passed out of the light into an impenetrable blackness. He sat with his
head bent down, changed in a moment from a light-hearted boy to a
despairing man.

"I want you to come home and fill the place that she had. Mrs. Jackson
and I love you, and we need a child." Mr. Jackson continued.

"I can't do it," cried Desmond. "I should be thinking of her all the
time. I have lost all faith."

And so the world believed; for Desmond O'Connor, while he eschewed the
coarser vices and worked relentlessly, renounced for a period the
religion that his father's life should have made dear to him, and went
on his way a professed disbeliever.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE VIRTUE OF GREY TOWN.

The City Fathers who governed the municipality of Grey Town were not
unlike the councillors in other towns and cities. They laid no claim to
a pre-eminence in wisdom, professing to be merely ordinary men of
business, of sound common sense, and strictly honest for the greater
part.

Councillor Garnett was perhaps the single exception to this rule of
honesty. The other councillors worked from a sense of duty, possibly
urged by a worthy ambition. Councillor Garnett occasionally dipped his
hand in the municipal purse, and brought from it as many golden guineas
as he could clutch. Yet he had led the Council for many years, and was
still regarded by the Conservative element as a worthy leader. In all
probability he would have continued