of the fact that she would not touch it.  Margaret suffered a good deal through Hescott, and was devoutly grateful when she learned the morning after his visit to her that he had started for a prolonged tour in South Africa.  She learned this from himself in a somewhat incoherent letter, and a paragraph in the papers the day after set her mind at rest.  Margaret was a Christian, or she might have found consolation in the thought that there are lions in South Africa!

She watched Tita anxiously for a day or two after this, but could not see that the girl was distressed at Tom’s departure.  She talked of him, indeed, very freely—­always a good sign.

* * * * *

“Tita, do you hear the birds?” says Margaret, in quite a little excited way.  “Come here to this window.  How they sing!”

“Don’t they!” says Tita rapturously.

Her face lights up, but presently she looks a little sad.

“It makes you long for the country?” asks Margaret gently, looking at her without seeming to do so.

“No,” says Tita, shaking her head resolutely; and then:  “Yes—­yes.  But I shall always hate to go to it now—­now that the dear old home is gone.”

“I wish I had been able to buy it!” says Margaret regretfully.

“Oh, Meg, don’t go on like that!  You—­you who have been everything to me!”

“I wasn’t rich enough,” says Margaret ruefully; “and, at all events, I wasn’t in time.  I confess now I sold out some shares a little time ago with a view to getting it, but I was too late; it was bought—­a private sale, they said.”

“There is nothing I can say—­nothing,” says Tita, tears dimming her eyes.  “Why are you so good to me?  Oh, Meg! there is one, one thing—­I love you, and love you, and love you!” She slips her soft arms round Margaret’s neck, and presses her cheek to hers.  There is moisture on Margaret’s face when this little burst of gratitude has been accomplished.  “I never loved anyone as I love you,” says Tita.

“There is someone else you ought to love better, Tita.”

“There is someone else I hate," returns Tita, with really astonishing promptitude.

“Well, about Oakdean,” says Margaret quickly, appalled by this outbreak of wrath.

“There is nothing about it; it is gone,” says Tita, in a forlorn sort of way; then:  “I wonder who bought it?”

“I don’t know.  I asked, but I could not find out.  Some rich merchant, no doubt.”

“Well,” sighing, “a rich merchant bought it before—­my poor father—­and to a rich merchant it has gone.  That is as it should be.  Still, it was so pretty, so lovely, so homelike, that I wish——­”

“What, darling?”

“That it had been burnt to the ground before anyone else got it,” breaks out Tita, in a little storm of grief and despair.

“Yes, I know; I can feel with you,” says Margaret, pressing her back into a chair, and hovering over her with loving touches and tender words.  “But, after all, Tita, one has to give up things daily.  It is life.  Life is one long surrender.”