lso extremely anxious to make reparation
to Mr. Winthrop for the wrong she has done him."

"She is as heartless and selfish as she is beautiful; and if she were to
be allowed the privilege of making reparation, the second offence would
be worse than the original one. But we will not mention her name again.
Leave her alone as she deserves."

"She compelled me to give my promise to go and see her again. She looks
for me to-day."

"Medoline, have you no sense of propriety? Mr. Winthrop's ward visiting,
unknown to him, the woman who wrought him such grievous wrong? Can you
expect him to forgive such an act, especially when he was getting to have
such confidence in your honesty and purity?"

"You will tell Mr. Winthrop?"

"I must obey him. It was his hope you would never hear the disgraceful
story. His special command if you did that I must tell him directly. I
promised to do so and I must fulfill that promise, but at a cost,
Medoline, that I dare not think of."

"Will you go directly then? Maybe this is my last day at Oaklands. I
shall not stay here to suffer his contempt and displeasure." I said
wearily, my bodily misery dulling to some extent the mental pain; for I
was growing sick rapidly. With difficulty I gained the shelter of my own
room, my one haven of refuge in the wide world. Crouching by the window I
watched the mad, hurrying storm outside, and wondering vaguely if nature
suffered in this elemental warfare as we did in our tempests of the soul
when the very foundations of hope and happiness were getting swept from
our feet. In imagination I re-lived my past months at Oaklands, my
intercourse with Mr. Winthrop, his gradually increasing esteem, the
friendship, nay rather the comradeship that was being cemented between us
over literature and art, the help he was giving me in these, and the rare
life that imagination was beginning to picture that we might enjoy
through coming years together.

I realized then, as never before, how happy I had been in my new home;
and with a clearness that gave me pain came the consciousness how much my
guardian had become to me. After to-day I might never again call Oaklands
my home. If I had gone at once and confessed to Mr. Winthrop on my return
that day from Linden Lane that I had met Mrs. Le Grande he could not have
been reasonably angry with me; but I had concealed from him the fact, and
had also promised her another interview, and now with vision grown
suddenly clear I c