se; "why, it's Mr. Hope. How do you do, Hope? This is my
little girl. Mary, my dear, this is an old friend of mine. Give him
your hand."

The girl looked in Hope's face, and gave him her hand, and did not
recognize him.

"Fine girl for her years, isn't she?" said Bartley. "Healthy and strong,
and quick at her lessons; and, what's better still, she is a good girl, a
very good girl."

"Papa!" said the child, blushing, and hid her face behind Bartley's
elbow, all but one eye, with which she watched the effect of these
eulogies upon the strange gentleman.

"She is all a father could wish," said Hope, tenderly.

Instantly the girl started from her position, and stood wrapt in thought;
her beautiful eyes wore a strange look of dreamy intelligence, and both
men could see she was searching the past for that voice.

Bartley drew back, that the girl might not see him, and held up his
finger. Hope gave a slight nod of acquiescence, and spoke no more.
Bartley invited him to take an early dinner, and talk business. Before he
left he saw his child more than once; indeed, Bartley paraded her
accomplishments. She played the piano to Hope; she rode her little
Shetland pony for Hope; she danced a minuet with singular grace for so
young a girl; she conversed with her governess in French, or something
very like it, and she worked a little sewing-machine, all to please the
strange gentleman; and whatever she was asked to do she did with a
winning smile, and without a particle of false modesty, or the real
egotism which is at the bottom of false modesty.

Anybody who knew William Hope intimately might almost recognize his
daughter in this versatile little mind with its faculty of learning so
many dissimilar things.

Hope left for the Continent with a proud heart, a joyful heart, and a
sore heart. She was lovely, she was healthy, she was happy, she was
accomplished, but she was his no longer, not even in name; her love was
being gained by a stranger, and there was a barrier of iron, as well as
the English Channel, between William Hope and his own Mary Bartley.

It would weary the reader were we to detail the small events bearing on
the part of the story which took place during the next five years. They
might be summed up thus: That William Hope got a peep at his daughter now
and then; and, making a series of subtle experiments by varying his voice
as much as possible, confused and nullified her memory of that voice to
all appearanc