cast loose into a fathomless sea, from which he could fish nothing
up; but the little heir was well and happy, and he devoutly hoped that
he would remain so, and save to himself the anxiety of showing, and to
Valentine the pain and doubt that would come of reading the letter.

Mrs. Melcombe, narrow as were her thoughts, was, notwithstanding, a
schemer in a small way. She had felt that Brandon must have had
something to say to Laura when she herself coming up had interrupted
him. Laura had few reserves from her, so when she had ascertained that
nothing had occurred when she had left them together in the
grandmother's sitting-room but such talk as naturally arose out of the
visit to it, she resolved to give him another opportunity, and after
breakfast was about to propose a walk, when he helped her by asking her
to show him that room again.

"I should like so much to have a photograph of Mr. Mortimer's picture,"
he said; "may I see it again?"

Nothing more easy. They all went up to the room; a fire had been lighted
to air it, because its atmosphere had felt chilly the day before. Laura
seated herself again on the sofa. Brandon, with pen and ink, began
trying to make a sketch of the portrait, and very soon found himself
alone with Laura, as he had fully expected would be the case. Whereupon,
sitting with his back to her, and working away at his etching, he
presently said--

"I mentioned yesterday to Mrs. Melcombe that I had come on business."

"Yes," Laura answered.

"So as it concerns only you, I will, if you please, explain it now."

As he leaned slightly round towards her Laura looked up, but she was
mute through surprise. There was something in this voice at once
penetrative and sweet; but now she was again conscious of what sounded
like a delicately-hinted reproof.

"A young man," he proceeded, "whom I have known almost all my life--in
fact, I may call him a friend of mine--told me of an event that had
taken place--he called it a misfortune that had befallen him. It had
greatly unsettled him, he said, for a long time; and now that he was
getting over it, and wanted to forget it, he wished for a change, would
like to go abroad, and asked if I could help him. I have many foreign
acquaintances. It so chanced that I had just been applied to by one of
them to send him out an Englishman, a clerk, to help him with his
English correspondence. So I proposed to this young fellow to go, and he
gladly consented."

Laur