said. "Do you not know to whom she is talking? Can
you bear to see it?"

"Upon my soul, aunt Leo," said the young man, "I don't know what you
mean!"

He looked at the scene before him. The white country road stretched in
an undulating line to right and left, its smooth surface mottled with
patches of sunlight and tracts of refreshing shade. A broad margin of
grass on either side, tall hedges of hawthorn and hazel, soothed the eye
that might be wearied with the glare and whiteness of the road. On one
of these grassy margins two children were standing face to face. Hubert
recognised his little cousin Enid Vane, but the other--a sunburnt,
gipsy-looking creature, with unkempt hair and ragged clothes--who could
she be?

"You were at the trial," Miss Vane whispered to him, in dismayed,
reproachful tones. "Do you not know her? it is no fault of hers, poor
child, of course; and yet it does give me a shock to see poor little
Enid talking in that friendly way with the daughter of her father's
murderer."

For the child was no other than little Jenny Westwood, whom Hubert had
seen for a few minutes only at her father's trial three weeks before.

CHAPTER VI.

Hubert stopped short. If Miss Vane had been looking at him, she would
have seen that his face flushed deeply and then turned very pale. But
she herself, with her gold eye-glasses fixed very firmly on the bridge
of her high nose, was concentrating her whole attention upon the
children.

"Enid," she called out rather sharply, "what are you doing there? Come
to me."

Enid turned to her aunt. She was a singularly sensitive looking child,
with lips that paled too rapidly and veins that showed with almost
painful distinctness beneath the soft white skin. Her features were
delicately cut, and gave promise of future beauty, when health should
lend its vivifying touch to the white little face. Her eyes, of a tender
violet-gray, were even now remarkable, and her hair was of rippling
gold.

Her sombre black dress and the sunshine that poured down upon the spot
where she was standing contributed to the dazzling effect produced by
her golden hair and white skin. There could not have been a greater
contrast than that between her and Andrew Westwood's daughter, upon whom
at that moment Hubert Lepel's eyes were fixed.

Jenny Westwood, as she was generally called, although her father gave
her a different name, was thinner, browner wilder-looking, than she had
even been be