Mrs. Fordyce wisely allowed it to have full vent, but at last she seated herself by the couch, and laid her hand on the girl’s flushed and heated head.

’Now, my dear, be calm.  It is all over.  You will be better soon, my poor, dear, darling child.’

Gladys sat up, and her wet eyes met those of her kind friend, who had allowed her upright and womanly heart to take the right, if the unworldly side.

’Just think how merciful it was of God to let me know in time.  In a few weeks I should have been his wife, and then it would have been terrible.’

‘It would,’ said Mrs. Fordyce, with a sigh; ’but you would just have had to bury it, and live on, as many other women have to do, with such skeletons in the cupboard.’

’I don’t suppose I should have died, but I should have lived the rest of my life apart from him.  Is it true what he says, that so many are bad?  I cannot believe it.’

’Nor do I. There are some, I know, who have had an unworthy past, but you must remember that all women do not look at moral questions from your exalted standpoint.  There are even girls, like Julia, for instance, who admire men who are a little fast.’

’How dreadful!  That must lower the morality of men.  It shall never be said of me.  If I cannot marry a man who entertains a high and reverent ideal of manhood and womanhood, I shall die as I am.’

‘He will be difficult to find, my dear,’ said Mrs. Fordyce sadly.  ’This is a melancholy end to all our high hopes and ambitions.  It will be a frightful blow to them at Pollokshields.’

’I am not sorry for them.  They will think only of what the world will say, and will never give poor Lizzie one kindly thought.  If it is a blow, they deserve it; I am not sorry for them at all.’

‘And you are not in the least disconcerted at the nine days’ wonder the breaking of your engagement will make?’

’Not in the least.  What is it, after all?  The buzzing of a few idle flies.  I have no room for anything in my heart but a vast pity for the poor dead girl who was more sinned against than sinning, and a profound thankfulness to God for His unspeakable mercy to me.’

She spoke the truth; and in her own home that night, upon her knees, she poured forth her heart in fervent prayer, and mingling with her many strange feelings was a strange and unutterable sense of relief, because she was once more free.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE WORLD WELL LOST.

Gladys returned to her own home that night, and when she again left it it was in altered and happy circumstances.  Those who loved her so dearly watched over her the next days with a tender and solicitous concern, but they did not see much, in her outward demeanour at least, to give them cause for alarm.  She was certainly graver, preoccupied, and rather sad; but, again, her natural gaiety would over-flow more spontaneously than it had done for long, thus showing that pride and womanly feeling had been wounded; the heart was perfectly whole.