Suiting the action to the word, he hastened down the stairs, glancing back once, and seeing ’Lena reclining upon his father’s arm, while her eyes were raised to his with a sweet, confiding smile, which told of perfect happiness.

“Thank God that I am unarmed, else he could not live,” thought he, hurrying into the bar-room, where he placed in Uncle Timothy’s hands double the sum due for himself and ’Lena, and then, without a word of explanation, he walked away.

He was a good pedestrian, and preferring solitude in his present state of feeling, he determined to go on foot to Canandaigua, a distance of little more than a dozen miles.  Meantime, Mr. Graham was learning from ’Lena the cause of her being there, and though she, as far as possible, softened the fact of his having been accessory to her misfortunes, he felt it none the less keenly, and would frequently interrupt her with the exclamation that it was the result of his cowardice—­his despicable habit of secrecy.  When she spoke of the curl which his wife had burned, he seemed deeply affected, groaning aloud as he hid his face in his hands,

“And she found it—­she burned it,” said he; “and it was all I had left of my Helena.  I cut it from her head on the morning of my departure, when she lay sleeping, little dreaming of my cruel desertion.  But,” he added, “I can bear it better now that I have you, her living image, for what she was when last I saw her, you are now.”

Their conversation then turned upon Durward, and with the tact he so well knew how to employ, Mr. Graham drew from his blushing daughter a confession of the love she bore him.

“He is worthy of you,” said he, while ’Lena, without seeming to heed the remark, said, “I have not seen him yet, but I am expecting him every moment, for he was to visit me this morning.”

At this juncture Mrs. Aldergrass, who had been at one of her neighbors’, came in, appearing greatly surprised at the sight of the stranger, whom ’Lena quietly introduced as “her father,” while Mr. Graham colored painfully as Mrs. Aldergrass, curtsying very low, hoped Mr. Rivers was well!

“Let it go so,” whispered ’Lena, as she saw her father about to speak.

Mr. Graham complied, and then observing how anxiously his daughter’s eyes sought the doorway, whenever a footstep was heard, he asked Mrs. Aldergrass for Mr. Bellmont, saying they would like to see him, if he had returned.

Quickly going downstairs, Mrs. Aldergrass soon came back, announcing that “he’d paid his bill and gone off.”

“Gone!” said Mr. Graham.  “There must be some mistake.  I will go down and inquire.”

With his hand in his pocket grasping the purse containing the gold, Uncle Timothy told all he knew, adding, that “’twan’t noways likely but he’d come back agin, for he’d left things in his room to the vally of five or six dollars.”