the loss
of Darrell Court seemed trifling to her. Life had suddenly assumed
another aspect. She was in an unknown land; she was happy beyond
everything that she had ever conceived or imagined it possible to be. It
was a quiet, subdued happiness, one that was dissolving her pride
rapidly as the sunshine dissolves snow--happiness that was rounding off
the angles of her character, that was taking away scorn and defiance,
and bringing sweet and gracious humility, womanly grace and tenderness
in their stead.

While Sir Vane was studying her as the most difficult problem he had
ever met with, he heard from Miss Hastings the story of her life. He
could understand how the innate strength and truth of the girl's
character had rebelled against polite insincerities and conventional
untruths; he could understand that a soul so gifted, pure, and eager
could find no resting-place and no delight; he could understand, too,
how the stately old baronet, the gentleman of the old school, had been
frightened at his niece's originality, and scared by her uncompromising
love of truth.

Miss Hastings, whose favorite theme in Pauline's absence was praise of
her, had told both mother and son the story of Sir Oswald's project and
its failure--how Pauline would have been mistress of Darrell Court and
all her uncle's immense wealth if she would but have compromised
matters and have married Aubrey Langton.

"Langton?" questioned Sir Vane. "I know him--that is, I have heard of
him; but I cannot remember anything more than that he is a great _roue_,
and a man whose word is never to be believed."

"Then my pupil was right in her estimate of his character," said Miss
Hastings. "She seemed to guess it by instinct. She always treated him
with the utmost contempt and scorn. I have often spoken to her about
it."

"You may rely upon it, Miss Hastings, that the instinct of a good woman,
in the opinion she forms of men, is never wrong," observed Sir Vane,
gravely; and then he turned to Lady St. Lawrence with the sweet smile
his face always wore for her.

"Mother," he said, gently, "after hearing of such heroism as that, you
must not be angry about Lillith Davenant again."

"That is a very different matter," opposed Lady St. Lawrence; but it
seemed to her son very much the same kind of thing.

Before he had known Pauline long he was not ashamed to own to himself
that he loved her far better than all the world beside--that life for
him, unless she wou