“Was my message delivered to him?”

Unconcernedly as she spoke she waited with some anxiety for the answer.

“Oh, yes, miss.  Silas delivered it himself.  The master was in company with Mr. Lablache and the doctor, miss,” added the girl, discreetly.

“And what did he say?”

“He sent Silas for the letter, miss.”

“He didn’t say what time he would return, I suppose?”

“No, miss—­” She hesitated and fumbled at the door handle.

“Well?” as the girl showed by her attitude that there was something she had left unsaid.

Jacky’s question rang acutely in the quiet room.

“Silas—­” began the girl, with a deprecating air of unbelief—­“you know what strange notions he takes—­he said—­”

The girl stopped in confusion under the steady gaze of her mistress.

“Speak up, girl,” exclaimed Jacky, impatiently.  “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing, miss,” the girl blurted out desperately.  “Only Silas said as the master didn’t seem well like.”

“Ah!  That will do.”  Then, as the girl still stood at the door, “You can go.”

The dismissal was peremptory, and the half-breed had no choice but to depart.  She had hoped to have heard something interesting, but her mistress was never given to being communicative with servants.

When the door had closed behind the half-breed Jacky turned again towards the stove.  Again she was plunged in deep thought.  This time there could be no mistake as to its tenor.  Her heart was racked with an anxiety which was not altogether new to it.  The sweet face was pale and her eyelids flickered ominously.  The servant’s veiled meaning was quite plain to her.  Brave, hardy as this girl of the prairie was, the fear that was ever in her heart had suddenly assumed the proportions of a crushing reality.  She loved her uncle with an affection that was almost maternal.  It was the love of a strong, resolute nature for one of a kindly but weak disposition.  She loved the gray-headed old man, whose affection had made her life one long, long day of happiness, with a tenderness which no recently-acquired faults of his could alienate.  He—­and now another—­was her world.  A world in which it was her joy to dwell.  And now—­now; what of the present?  Racked by losses brought about through the agency of his all-absorbing passion, the weak old man was slowly but surely taking to drowning his consciousness of the appalling calamity which he had consistently set to work to bring about, and which in his lucid moments he saw looming heavily over his house, in drink.  She had watched him with the never-failing eye of love, and had seen, to her horror, the signs she so dreaded.  She could face disaster stoically, she could face danger unflinchingly, but this moral wrecking of the old man, who had been more to her than a father, was more than she could bear.  Two great tears welled up into her beautiful, somber eyes and slowly rolled down her cheeks.  She bowed like a willow bending to the force of the storm.