“Who’s that?” asked Jenny, and George replied that it was a Miss Herndon, who had accompanied him from New Orleans to visit her aunt, Mrs. Russell.

“He says she’s an heiress, and very beautiful,” rejoined Ida, seating herself at the piano.

Instantly catching at the words “heiress” and “beautiful,” Henry started up, asking “if it would be against all the rules of propriety for him to call upon her thus early.”

“I think it would,” was George’s brief answer, while Mary’s eyes flashed scornfully upon the young man, who, rather crestfallen, announced himself ready to listen to Ida whom he secretly styled “an old maid,” because since his first remembrance she had treated him with perfect indifference.

That night before retiring the three girls sat down by the cheerful fire in Mary’s room to talk over the events of the day, when Mary suddenly asked Ida to tell her truly, if it were not George who had paid her bills at Mount Holyoke.

“What bills?” said Jenny, to whom the idea was new while Ida replied, “And suppose it was?”

“I am sorry,” answered Mary, laying her head upon the table.

“What a silly girl,” said Ida.  “He was perfectly able, and more than willing, so why do you care?”

“I do not like being so much indebted to any one,” was Mary’s reply, and yet in her secret heart there was a strange feeling of pleasure in the idea that George had thus cared for her, for would he have done so, if—.  She dared not finish that question even to herself,—­dared not ask if she hoped that George Moreland loved her one half as well as she began to think she had always loved him.  Why should he, with his handsome person and princely fortune, love one so unworthy, and so much beneath him?  And then, for the first time, she thought of her changed position since last they met.  Then she was a poor, obscure schoolmistress,—­now, flattered, caressed, and an heiress.  Years before, when a little pauper at Chicopee, she had felt unwilling that George should know how destitute she was, and now in the time of her prosperity she was equally desirous that he should, for a time at least, remain ignorant of her present condition.

“Ida,” said she, lifting her head from the table “does George know that I am Mrs. Campbell’s niece?”

“No,” answered Ida, “I wanted to tell him, but Aunt Martha said I’d better not.”

“Don’t then,” returned Mary, and resuming her former position she fell into a deep reverie, from which she was at last aroused, by Jenny’s asking “if she intended to sit up all night?”

The news that George Moreland had returned, and bought Rose Lincoln’s piano, besides several other articles, spread rapidly, and the day following his arrival Mary and Ida were stopped in the street by a group of their companions, who were eager to know how George bore the news that his betrothed was so ill, and if it was not that which had brought him home so soon, and then the conversation turned upon Miss Herndon, the New Orleans lady who had that morning appeared in the street; “And don’t you think,” said one of the girls, “that Henry Lincoln was dancing attendance upon her?  If I were you,” turning to Mary, “I’d caution my sister to be a little wary of him.  But let me see, their marriage is to take place soon?”