rses repeated, he let the old woman go back to her own home."

One of the two listeners, at all events, did not seem to be particularly
struck by the pathos of Mary Macleod's lament. She walked up to the
piano.

"Where did you get that book, Gerty?" she said, in a firm voice.

"Where?" said the other, innocently. "In Manchester, I think it was, I
bought it."

But before she had made the explanation, Miss Carry, convinced that
this, too, had come from her enemy, had seized the book and turned to
the title-page. Neither on title-page nor on fly-leaf, however, was
there any inscription.

"Did you think it had come with the otter-skins, Carry?" the elder
sister said, laughing; and the younger one retired, baffled and
chagrined, but none the less resolved that before Gertrude White
completely gave herself up to this blind infatuation for a savage
country and for one of its worthless inhabitants, she would have to run
the gauntlet of many a sharp word of warning and reproach.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN LONDON AGAIN.

On through the sleeping counties rushed the train--passing woods,
streams, fertile valleys, and clustering villages, all palely shrouded
in the faint morning mist that had a sort of suffused and hidden
sunlight in it; the world had not yet awoke. But Macleod knew that, ere
he reached London people would be abroad; and he almost shrank from
meeting the look of those thousands of eager faces. Would not some of
them guess his errand? Would he not be sure to run against a friend of
hers--an acquaintance of his own? It was with a strange sense of fear
that he stepped out and on to the platform at Euston Station; he glanced
up and down; if she were suddenly to confront his eyes! A day or two ago
it seemed as if innumerable leagues of ocean lay between him and her, so
that the heart grew sick with thinking of the distance; now that he was
in the same town with her, he felt so close to her that he could almost
hear her breathe.

Major Stuart has enjoyed a sound night's rest, and was now possessed of
quite enough good spirits and loquacity for two. He scarcely observed
the silence of his companion. Together they rattled away through this
busy, eager, immense throng, until they got down to the comparative
quiet of Bury Street; and here they were fortunate enough to find not
only that Macleod's old rooms were unoccupied, but that his companion
could have the corresponding chambers on the floor above. They changed