For a while, over and above the pain which the theft caused her, there came—­how could it be otherwise?—­sudden pangs of regret that this same love was hopeless, at least upon this side of the grave.  Inconsistent they were with the chivalrous unselfishness of her usual temper; and as such she dashed them from her, and conquered them, after a while, by a method which many a woman knows too well.  It was but “one cross more;” a natural part of her destiny—­the child of sorrow and heaviness of heart.  Pleasure in joy she was never to find on earth; she would find it, then, in grief.  And nursing her own melancholy, she went on her way, sad, sweet, and steadfast, and lavished more care and tenderness, and even gaiety, than ever upon her neighbours’ children, because she knew that she should never have a child of her own.

But there is a third damsel, to whom, whether more or less engaging than Grace Harvey or Miss Heale, my readers must needs be introduced.  Let Miss Heale herself do it, with eyes full of jealous curiosity.

“There is a foreign letter for Mr. Thurnall, marked Montreal, and sent on here from Whitbury,” said she, one morning at breakfast, and in a significant tone; for the address was evidently in a woman’s hand.

“For me—­ah, yes; I see,” said Tom, taking it carelessly, and thrusting it into his pocket.

“Won’t you read it at once, Mr. Thurnall?  I’m sure you must be anxious to hear from friends abroad;” with an emphasis on the word friends.

“I have a good many acquaintances all over the world, but no friends that I am aware of,” said Tom, and went on with his breakfast.

“Ah—­but some people are more than friends.  Are the Montreal ladies pretty, Mr. Thurnall?”

“Don’t know; for I never was there.”

Miss Heale was silent, being mystified:  and, moreover, not quite sure whether Montreal was in India or in Australia, and not willing to show her ignorance.

She watched Tom through the glass door all the morning to see if he read the letter, and betrayed any emotion at its contents:  but Tom went about his business as usual, and, as far as she saw, never read it at all.

However, it was read in due time; for, finding himself in a lonely place that afternoon, Tom pulled it out with an anxious face, and read a letter written in a hasty ill-formed hand, underscored at every fifth word, and plentifully bedecked with notes of exclamation.

“What? my dearest friend, and fortune still frowns upon you?  Your father blind and ruined!  Ah, that I were there to comfort him for your sake!  And ah, that I were anywhere, doing any drudgery, which might prevent my being still a burden to my benefactors.  Not that they are unkind; not that they are not angels!  I told them at once that you could send me no more money till you reached England, perhaps not then; and they answered that God would send it; that He who had sent me to them would send the means of supporting