But the warning had come to the handsome young assistant cashier too late.

CHAPTER II.

“You must not marry him—­heaven intended you for me.”

Slowly but surely the sturdy engine struggled on through the huge snowdrifts, reaching Beechwood a little after seven, over an hour and a half behind time.

Lester Armstrong swung himself off the rear platform into fully five feet of snow, floundering helplessly about for an instant, while the train plunged onward, and at last struck the path that led up over the hills in the village beyond.

Beechwood consisted of but a few elegant homes owned and occupied by retired New Yorkers of wealth.  Horace Fairfax was perhaps the most influential, as well as the wealthiest of these; his magnificent home on the brow of the farthest hill was certainly the most imposing and pretentious.

Lester Armstrong’s heart gave a great bound as he came within sight of it, standing like a great castle, with its peaks and gables, and windows all blazing with light and the red glow of inward warmth against its dark background of fir trees more than a century old, and the white wilderness of snow stretching out and losing itself in the darkness beyond.

All heedless of the terrible storm raging about him, the young man paused at the arched gate and looked with sad wistfulness, as he leaned his arms on one of the stone pillars, up the serpentine path that led to the main entrance.

“What I ought to do is never to see Faynie again,” he murmured, but as the bare thought rushed through his mind, his handsome face paled to the lips and his strong frame trembled.  Never see Faynie again!  That would mean shut out the only gleam of sunshine that had ever lighted up the gray somberness of his existence; take away from him the only dear joy that had made life worth the living for the few months.  He had drifted into these clandestine meetings, not by design; chance, or fate, rather, had forced him into it.

Mr. Marsh, the senior member of the firm by whom he was employed, also resided in Beechwood.  It was his whim that the keys of the private office should be brought to him each night.  Thus it happened that the performance of his duties led Lester each evening past the Fairfax home.

One summer evening he espied Faynie, the object of his ardent admiration, standing in the flower garden, herself the fairest flower of all.  It was beyond human nature to resist stopping still to gaze upon her.  This he did, believing himself unseen, but Faynie Fairfax had beheld the tall, well-known form afar down the road, and she was not displeased at the prospect of having a delightful little chat with the handsome young cashier.

Faynie’s home was not as congenial to the young girl as it might have been, for a stepmother reigned supreme there, and all of her love was lavished upon her own daughter Claire, a crippled, quiet girl of about Faynie’s own age, and Faynie was left to do about as she pleased.  Her father almost lived in his library among his books, and she saw little of him for days at a time.