"H'm!" she said, laying the letter on the table and looking inquiringly at her niece. "What does he mean?"

"He means that he still thinks me engaged to him," said Enid, the color hot in her girlish cheeks.

"Then you had better disabuse him of that notion, my dear, for you can't be engaged to two people at once; and I have given my consent to your marriage with Mr. Evandale."

"Do you think," said Enid, in a half whisper, "that I have been mistaken, and that Hubert will be--sorry?"

"No, dear, I don't!"

"Aunt Leo, is this report true about him and Miss West?"

"What do you know about Miss West, Enid?"

"Uncle Richard told me. She came to nurse Hubert when he was ill. Uncle Richard seemed to think that very wrong of her; but I don't. I think it was right, if she loved him. If Maurice were ill, I should like to go and nurse him, whether he cared for me or not."

"Child," said Miss Vane solemnly, "you are a simpleton! You don't know what you are talking about! I have seen Cynthia West and talked to her, and she is not a woman who, I should think, knows what true love is at all. She is hard and careless and worldly, and singularly ill-mannered.

She is not the woman that Hubert would do well to marry."

"What am I to say to him?" asked Enid, with her eyes on the tablecloth, "if he says that he does not want to marry her--that he wants to marry me?"

"You must tell him the truth, my dear," said Miss Vane, rising briskly from the table, and shaking out a fold of her dress on which some crumbs had fallen--"namely, that you don't care a rap for him, but that you are in love with the Beechfield parson; and if Hubert is a gentleman, he will not press his claim. And to do Hubert justice, whatever may be his faults, I believe that he generally acts like a gentleman."

Miss Vane went away from the dining-room to dress for a drive and a round of calls. Before long, Enid, who had refused to accompany her, was left in the house alone; and then a vague desire began to take definite shape in her mind. She would see Hubert for herself. She would claim her own freedom, and tell him that he was free. He was well enough now to listen to her, if he was well enough to write. She would go to him while aunt Leo was out--that very afternoon.

A hansom-cab made the matter very easy. She had almost a sense of elation as she stood at the door of Hubert's sitting-room and knocked her timid little knock, which had to be twice repeated before the door was opened; and then a tall slight girl in black stood in the doorway and asked her what she wanted.

"I want to see Mr. Lepel," said Enid, blushing and hesitating.

"Mr. Lepel has been ill." The girl's clear voice had a curious vibration in it as she spoke. "Do you want to see him particularly?"

Enid took courage and looked at her. The girl wore a black hat; her dress was severely plain, and her face was pale. Enid thought there was nothing remarkable about her--therefore that she could not be Cynthia West.

"I am his cousin," she explained simply, "and my name is Vane--Enid Vane."

A flash of new expression changed the girl's face at once. Not remarkable--with those great dark eyes, and the lovely color coming and going in the oval cheeks! Enid confessed her mistake to herself frankly.

The girl was remarkably handsome--it was a fact that could not be gainsaid. Enid looked at her gravely, with a little feeling of repulsion which she found it difficult to help.

"Will you come in?" said Cynthia. "Mr. Lepel is in his room; but he means to get up this afternoon. If you will kindly wait for a few moments in his sitting-room, I am sure that he will be with you before long. I will speak to his man Jenkins."

She had ushered Enid into Hubert's front room, from which the untidiness had disappeared. His artistic properties were displayed to great advantage, and every vase was filled with flowers. It was plain that a woman's hand had been at work.

Enid glanced around her with curiosity. Cynthia pushed a chair towards her, and waited until the visitor had seated herself. Then, repeating the words, "I will speak to his man Jenkins," she prepared to leave the room.

Enid rose from her chair.

"You are Miss West," she said--"Cynthia West?"

"Cynthia Westwood," replied the girl, and looked sorrowfully yet proudly into Enid's eyes.

Her face was flushed, but Enid's had turned pale.

"Will you stay and speak to me for a minute or two? I see that you were going out----"

"It does not matter; I need not go," said Cynthia, removing her hat and laying it carelessly on one of the tables. "If you want to speak to me----"

Neither of them concluded her sentence. Each was conscious of great embarrassment.

For once in her life, Cynthia stood like a culprit; for she thought that Enid loved Hubert Lepel, and that she--Cynthia--had withdrawn him from his allegiance. It was Enid who broke the silence.

"I wanted to see you," she said. "I came to see you more than to see Hubert. I heard you were here."

Cynthia looked up quickly.

"You heard Mrs. Vane's opinion of me, I suppose?" It was bitterly spoken.

"My uncle told me--not Mrs. Vane," said Enid. "I should not believe a thing just because Mrs. Vane said it--nor my uncle, for his opinions all come from Mrs. Vane."

Her expressions were somewhat vague; but her meaning was clear. Cynthia flashed a grateful glance at her.

"You mean," she said, holding her graceful head a trifle higher than usual, "that you do not think that I am unwomanly--that I have disgraced myself--because I came here to nurse Mr. Lepel in his illness?"

"No! I should have done the same in your place--if I loved a man."

The color mounted to the roots of Cynthia's hair.

"You know that?" she said quickly. "That I--I love him, I mean? There is no use in denying it--I do. There is no harm in it. I shall not hurt him by loving him--as I shall love him--to the last day of my life."

"No; I should be the last person to blame you," said Enid very gently, "because I know what love is myself;" and then the clear color flamed all over her fair face as it had flamed in Cynthia's.

Cynthia bit her lip.

"You do not think," she said, with the impetuous abruptness which might have been ungraceful in a less beautiful woman, but was never unbecoming to her, "that because I love him I want to take him away from those who have a better right than I to his love? I learned to care for him unawares; I had given him my love in secret long before--before he knew.

He knows it now; I cannot help his knowing. But I am not ashamed. I should be ashamed if I thought that I could make him unfaithful to you."

Enid looked at her, and admired. Cynthia's generosity was taking her heart by storm. But for the moment she could not speak, and Cynthia went on rapidly.

"You do not know what he has been to me. I have had trouble and misfortune in my life, and I have had kindness and good friends also; but he--he was almost the first--he and you together, Miss Vane, although you do not know what I mean perhaps. Do you remember meeting a ragged child on the road outside your park gates, and speaking kindly to her and giving her your only shilling? That was myself!"

"You," cried Enid--"you that little gipsy girl! I remember that I could not understand why I was sent away." Then she stopped short and looked aside, fearing lest she had said something that might hurt.

"I know," said Cynthia. "Your aunt--Miss Vane--was shocked to find you talking to me, for she knew who I was. She sent you back to the house; but before you went you asked Mr. Lepel to be good to me. He promised--and he kept his word. Although I did not know it until long afterwards, it was he who sent me to school for many years, and had me trained and cared for in every possible way. I did not even know his name; but I treasured up my memories of that one afternoon when I saw him at Beechfield all through the years that I spent at school. I knew your name; and I kept the shilling that you gave me, in remembrance of your goodness. I have worn it ever since. See--it is round my neck now, and I shall never part from it. And do you think that, after all these years of gratitude and tender memory of your kindness, I would do you a wrong so terrible as that of which Mrs. Vane accuses me? I would die first! I love Hubert; but, if I may say so, I love you, Miss Vane, too, humbly and from a distance--and I will never willingly give you a moment's pain. I will be guided by what you wish me to do. If you tell me to leave the house this day, I will go, and never see him more. You have the right to command, and I will obey."

"But why," said Enid slowly, "did you not think of all this earlier?

Why, when you were older, did you not remember that you--you had no right----"

She could not finish her sentence.

"Because of his relationship to you, and his engagement to you?" said Cynthia. "Oh, I see that I must tell you more! Miss Vane, I was ungrateful enough to run away from the school at which he placed me, as soon as my story became accidently known to my schoolfellows. I was then befriended by an old musician, who taught me how to sing and got me an engagement on the stage. When he died, I was reduced to great poverty. I heard of Mr. Lepel at the theatre. He wrote plays, and had become acquainted with my face and my stage-name; but he did not know that I was the girl whom he had sent to school; and I did not know that he was the gentleman whom I had seen with you at Beechfield. His face sometimes seemed vaguely familiar to me; but I could not imagine why."