s nothing to betray her but her
wedding-ring. She removed and suspended it round her neck on a piece of
ribbon. The miniature of Theodore Leigh, which had not been forgotten the
day she eloped, was also carefully secreted in a trunk.

The bill was paid, the fly at the door. One tender parting only remained;
this was with Archie, who had sprung into it after her, for he and
Bluebell had become inseparable. They could scarcely drag him away, and
she buried her face a minute in his rough coat with almost equal regret.

"Would you like to keep him, ma'am?" said the carpenter's wife.

"I cannot now, but when Mr. Dutton comes back, and we are settled, will
you let me have him?"

"Ah, well," said the woman, half disappointed, for she did not care for
Archie, "ye'll have forgotten all about it by then."

CHAPTER XXXV.

A DISCOVERY.

There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told;
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
--Hemans.

Bluebell was settled in her new abode, about fifteen miles from London:
and certainly few governesses have the luck to drop into a more sunshiny
home. Only two little girls, pleasantly disposed; no banishment to the
school-room. They all mingled sociably together after lessons were
over,--walked, drove in an Irish car, or played croquet and gardened
as the spring advanced.

Mr. Markham was a barrister in London, and came down to dinner most
days--not always, though; and his wife, still a young woman, was glad
enough to find a companion in Bluebell. Beauty, too, unless it excites
jealousy, is agreeable to look at, and she soon became interested in the
young Canadian. But after a while she was puzzled by her. There was a
far-off, touching look in her eyes that had come there since marriage,
and she was reserved about herself, though the stiffness of first
acquaintance had long ago given way to affectionate intimacy. For a girl
apparently so frank to be at the same time so guarded suggested something
to be concealed. Mrs. Markham, being a woman, could not refrain from
speculating about it. She had elicited many lively descriptions of
Bluebell's life in Canada, and the children were never weary of sleighing
and toboggining stories. But these were general subjects; her narratives
were never personal ones.

"By-the-bye," observed Mrs. Markham, one day, "how strange it was that
poor child, Evelyn Leighton, dy