’Well, Gladys was telling us at the very moment about the disappearance of this Hepburn girl, as you call her, and I happened to be looking at Cousin George while she was speaking, and, Clara, I can’t for the life of me help thinking he knows something about it.’

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Mina saw that she had made a profound mistake.  The red colour leaped into her sister’s face, dyeing even the curves of her stately throat.

‘I think you are a wicked, uncharitable girl, Mina,’ she said, with icy coldness.  ’I wonder you are not ashamed to have such a thought for a moment.  I only beg of you not to let it go any further.  It may do more harm than you think.’

So saying, Clara gathered up all her wraps and marched off to her own room, leaving her sister feeling rather hurt and humiliated, though not in the least convinced that she had simply given rein to an uncharitable imagination.  Mina was indeed so much troubled that she went off her sleep—­a most unusual experience for her; and the morning failed to banish, as it often benignly banishes, the misgivings of the night.

Once more Gladys made a pilgrimage to the old home where Walter dwelt alone, working early and late, the monotony of his toil only brightened by one constant hope.  It was a strange existence for the lad on the threshold of his young manhood, and many who knew something of his way of life wondered at the steady and dogged persistence with which he pursued his avocation.  He appeared to have reached, while yet not much past his boyhood, the grave, passionless calm which comes to most men only after they have outlived the passion of their youth.  He was regarded as a sharp, hard-working young man, with a keen eye for business, and honourable and just, but conspicuously hard to deal with—­one whose word was as his bond, and who, being so absolutely reliable himself, suffered no equivocation or crooked dealings in others.  By slow but certain degrees he had extricated himself from the strange network which old Abel Graham had woven about the business, and established it upon the basis of sound, straightforward dealing.  The old customers, in spite of certain advantages the new system offered, dropped away from him one by one, but others took their place.  When Walter balanced his books at the end of the first year, he had reason to be not only content, but elated, and he was enabled to carry out at once certain extensions which he had quite expected would only be justifiable after the lapse of some years.  But, while prospering beyond his highest anticipations, what of the growth of the true man, the development of the great human soul, which craves a higher destiny than mere grovelling among the sordid things of earth?  While supremely unconscious of any change in himself, there was nevertheless a great change—­a very great change indeed.  It was inevitable.  A life so narrow, so circumscribed, so barren of beauty, lived so solitarily, away from