After a month’s pleasant loitering abroad, they returned to London.  George took his cousins home, and Mrs. Fordyce went with Gladys into Lincolnshire.

And they found the fen village as of yore, in no wise changed, except that a few new graves had been added to the little churchyard.  The little spinster still abode in her dainty cottage, not much changed, except to look a trifle more aged and careworn.  The fastidious eye of the lawyer’s accomplished wife could detect no flaw in the demeanour of Miss Peck, and she added her entreaties to those of Gladys.  In truth, the poor little careworn woman was not hard to persuade.  She had no ties save those of memory to bind her to the fen country, so she gave her promise freely, accepting her new home as a gift from God.

‘I shall come one more time here only,’ Gladys said, ’to take papa away.  Mr. Fordyce promised to arrange it for me.  He must sleep with his own people; and when he is in the old churchyard I shall feel at home in Bourhill.’

All these things were done before the year was out; and Christmas saw Gladys Graham settled in her new home, ready and eager to take up the charge she believed God had entrusted to her—­the stewardship of wealth, to be used for His glory.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXII.

A HELPING HAND.

All this time nothing had been heard of Liz.  She was no longer known in her old haunts—­was almost forgotten, indeed, save by one or two.  Among those who remained faithful to her memory was the melancholy Teen, and she thought of her hour by hour as she sat at her monotonous work—­thought of her with a great wonder in her soul.  Sometimes a little bitterness intermingled, and she felt herself aggrieved at having been so shabbily treated by her old chum.  She had in her quiet way instituted a very thorough inquiry into all the circumstances of her flight, and had kept a watchful eye on every channel from which the faintest light was likely to shine upon the mystery, but at the end of six months it was still unsolved.  Liz was as irrevocably lost, apparently, as if the earth had opened and swallowed her.

Teen had come to the conclusion that Liz had veritably emigrated to London, and was there assiduously, and probably successfully, wooing fame and fortune.  Sometimes the weary burden of her toil was beguiled by dreams of a bright day on which Liz, grown a great lady, but still true to the old friendship, should come, perhaps, in a coach and pair, up the squalid street and remove the little seamstress to be a sharer in her glory.  In one particular Teen was entirely and persistently loyal to her friend.  She believed that she had kept herself pure, and when doubts had been thrown on that theory by others who believed in her less, she had closed their tattling mouths with language such as they were not accustomed to hear from her usually reticent lips.  These gossip-mongers,