secret progress, and had been intended as a present for that dear
mistress's birthday on the morrow. The third, last and most difficult,
was to write a letter. Gladys usually wrote easily and well. She had
been accustomed to assist her father at an early age, and had been
carefully taught by her mother, but on the present occasion she
considered every sentence with a too painful thoughtfulness, and
literally blotted her writing with her tears.

Morning was beginning to dawn before she had finished these tasks, and
then she washed her face and hands, took off the pretty cotton gown she
had on, and put on the one Netta gave her when first she came to
Glanyravon. An old straw hat that she had been in the habit of wearing
in the fields, and a tidy, but plain shawl, completed her attire. She
had a few shillings which Mr Prothero had given her, and these she put
into her pocket, together with a pincushion, and a curious foreign
shell, gifts of Owen.

She thought of Netta, and of her very different flight from the same
house; she fancied that if she had been in her place, no lover, however
dear, could have prevailed upon her to leave so good a mother; but she
was different. An orphan and a beggar, she had no right to remain to
cause dissension between father and son.

And so she fell upon her knees, and prayed for blessings on every member
of that family; she forgot no one, not even poor Owen, whose suit she
had rejected. Most especially she prayed that he might be a comfort to
his parents, and turn from his wild, wandering ways, to those of rest
and sobriety; she particularly used that latter word, which would have
sounded formal in less earnest lips.

With tearful eyes, and throbbing heart, but with a resigned spirit, she
rose from her knees, took her little bundle in her hand, and went
quickly out into the passage. She did not trust herself to pass the
doors of her slumbering friends, but went by the back-staircase into the
kitchen, and thence into the yard. There was a thick mist over the face
of nature, falling like a heavy veil on the rising sun, and making the
early day but a lengthened night; not a sound was heard, not an animal
had yet been aroused from sleep, save Lion, the large watch-dog, whose
duty it was to wake when others slept, and he bounded towards Gladys,
and her suppressed, 'Down, Lion, down,' failed to quiet him. As she
hurried up the road, he ran after her, and it was not until she reached
the gate,