ork for her living, and the opportunity for
doing so came more quickly than she had dared to hope.

With Miss Clayton, the mistress, she had been a favourite from the first
day she had entered the school, and the former now made her the offer of
remaining on as a pupil teacher. Without hesitation the girl accepted.
She had no relatives; Seaton Lodge was her second home; she was loved
there, and she would not be dependent; and from that hour never had she
to regret her decision.

When her father's affairs were settled up there remained but a few
pounds a year for her, but these she was able to put by, for Miss
Clayton was no niggard towards those that served her, and Selina
received sufficient salary for clothes and pocket-money.

After the first agony of the shock had passed away, her life was a happy
if a quiet one. Her companions all loved her; she was to them a friend
rather than a governess, and few were the holidays when she did not
receive more than one invitation to spend part of them at the homes of
some of her pupil friends.

She had been a permanent resident at Seaton Lodge some three years when
the romance of her life took place.

Among the elder pupils at that time was Maude Elliott, whose father's
house was not many miles distant from her friend's former home. She had
taken a great fancy to Selina, and on several occasions had carried her
off to spend a portion of the holidays with her, and it was at her home
that she had made the acquaintance of Edgar Freeman, Maude's cousin. A
young mining engineer, he had spent some years in Newfoundland, and had
returned to complete his studies for his full diploma at the School of
Mines, spending such time as he could spare at his uncle's house.

Almost before she was aware of it, he had made a prisoner of the lonely
little pupil-teacher's heart, and when she was convinced of the fact she
fought against it, deeming herself a traitor to her friend, to whom she
imagined he was attached, mistaking cousinly affection for something
warmer.

Then came that breaking-up for the Christmas holidays which she
remembered so well, when she was to have followed Maude in a few days to
her home, where she and Edgar would once more be together; and then the
great disappointment when, two days before she was to have started, Miss
Clayton was taken ill with pneumonia, and she had to stay and nurse her.

How well she remembered that terrible time! It was the most dreary
Christmas