the
boy."

"He's as haughty as a young lord," said Mrs. Penn. "Did you see how he
tossed his head at me, and waved his hand to send me away?"

"Well, Mrs. Penn, he is a sensible child, and he remembers the treatment
at Lee," answered Mrs. Beaton candidly. "We will let bygones be bygones;
but a child's memory keeps things shut up in it like a book. Andrew
often astonished me when he was Jamie's age. He never would forget
anything, especially if you wanted anything to be forgotten."

As the train sped homeward, Elsie looked from the window upon the
shifting landscape, but observed nothing. All seemed a blank.

Her mind, so long intent on one object, was new deprived of its centre
of thought. She recurred again and again to the old theme, only to say
to herself a hundred times, "Jamie is safe." Had she lived so much upon
this child that the secret of her interest had been self-forgetfulness?
Her search was ended, and she was left alone--quite alone with herself.

She reached All Saints' Street between eight and nine o'clock. It was a
clear night; the streets were full of carriages and people, and the
lights of the lamps and shops had never been brighter. But an aspect of
unreality pervaded everything, and she seemed to move through all these
lights and sounds as if she were in a city of dreams.

When she had answered Miss Saxon's questions, and told her all that had
happened in as few words as possible, she went upstairs to her
sitting-room; and then she sank into a chair, leaning her head upon its
back, and looking up at the stars above the roof.

Why was it that she was so melancholy to-night? She could have found it
in her heart to have envied that fair woman who had gone away with the
beautiful child by her side. Was Mrs. Verdon to have everything--wealth,
position, Jamie's love, and----

She sprang up suddenly from her chair in an agony of self-contempt and
self-reproach. It is always a hard thing for a proud woman to learn the
lesson of human weakness. Never before had Elsie suspected herself of
anything so mean as jealousy. "Oh, Meta," she said, half-aloud, "your
hand has pointed to a hard, lonely road, stretching out before me like a
desert! Show me the rest--the home--that lies beyond the waste! It seems
to-night as if, on earth or in heaven, there would never more be any
home for me."

CHAPTER XI

_MRS. VERDON_

"We know too much of Love ere we love. We can trace
Nothing new, unexpecte