curately, but it was something about butterflies and Mr. Gryce, though
what it was he could not positively say.

"Never mind: I will take the will for the deed," said the naturalist as
he smiled himself through the doorway.

And when he had gone Josephine declared that she did not care if he
never came again: there was something she did not like about him. Pushed
for a reason by her husband, who always assumed a logical and masculine
tone to her, she had not one to produce, but she stumbled as if by
chance on the word "sinister," which was just what Mr. Gryce was not. So
Sebastian made her go into the library for the dictionary and hunt up
the word through all its derivations, and thus proved to her
incontestably that she was ignorant of the English language and of human
nature in about equal proportions.

It was soon remarked at the post-office that no letter addressed to Miss
Dundas ever left North Aston, and that none came to Mr. Dundas or any
one else in the queer, cramped handwriting which experience had taught
Mrs. Pepper, post-mistress as well as the keeper of the village general
shop, carried the sentiments of Leam Dundas. This caused a curious
little buzz in the lower parts of the hive when Mrs. Pepper mentioned
it to her friends and gossips; but as no fire can live without fresh
fuel, and as nothing whatever was heard of Leam to stimulate curiosity
or set new tales afloat, by degrees her name dropped out of the daily
discussions of the place, and she was no longer interesting, because she
had become used up and talked out.

Only, Mr. Gryce wrote more frequently than had been his wont to Miss
Gryce at Windy Brow in Cumberland--conjectured to be his sister; and
only, Alick never ceased in his attempts to discover where his lost
queen was hidden, though these attempts had hitherto been hopelessly
baffled, partly because he had not an inch of foothold whence to make
his first spring, nor the thinnest clew to tell him which path to take.

And as a purchaser, the final cause of whose existence seemed to have
been the unquestioning possession of Ford House, came suddenly on the
scene and took the whole thing as it stood, Sebastian and his wife left
the place, taking Fina with them, and migrated to Paris to finish their
interrupted honeymoon. So now it was supposed that the last link
connecting Leam with North Aston was broken, and that she was indeed
blotted out and for ever.

True love is faithful, and Alick C