"It is nothing to me because it is not true," she said. "I know the world says so; but the world is wrong. He is not cowardly--he is not base; he has a noble heart. And when he did wrong it was for his sister's sake and to save her from punishment--not for his own. Oh, father, you never spoke so hardly of him before!"

"I am only repeating what the world says," replied Westwood stolidly. "I am not stating my own private opinion. What the world says is a very important thing, Cynthia."

"I don't care for what it says!" cried Cynthia impatiently.

"But I care--not for myself, but for you. And we've got to pay some attention to it--you and I and the man you marry, whoever he may be."

"It will be Hubert Lepel or nobody, father."

"It may be Hubert; but it won't be Hubert Lepel with my consent. He has no call to be very proud of his name that I can see. Look here, Cynthia!

When he comes out, you can tell him this from me--he may marry you if he'll take the name of 'Westwood' and give up that of 'Lepel'. Many a man does that, I'm told, when he comes into a fortune. Well, you're a fortune in yourself, besides what I've got to leave you. If he won't do that, he won't do much for you."

"I am not ashamed of his name," said Cynthia, with a little tremor in her voice.

"Well, perhaps not; but I'd rather it was so. I don't think I'm unreasonable, my dear. 'Lepel' isn't a common name, and it's too well known. As 'Mrs. Hubert Westwood' you will escape remark much more easily than as 'Mrs. Hubert Lepel.' I don't think it is too much to ask; and it's the one condition I make before I give my consent to his marrying you."

"I will tell him, father. Perhaps he will not mind."

"If he minds, he won't be worthy of you--that's all I've got to say,"

said Westwood, rising to his feet and preparing to leave the room.

But Cynthia intercepted him:

"Father, if he consents, you will forgive him, will you not?" she said putting her hands on his shoulder and looking anxiously into his eyes.

"Forgive him, my dear? Well, I suppose I have done that, or I shouldn't say that he might marry you at all."

"And you will forget the past, and love him a little for my sake?"

"I'm bound to love the people you love, Cynthy," said the old man stooping to kiss the beautiful face, and patting her cheek with his roll of plans; "and I don't think you've got any call to feel afraid."

CHAPTER LII.

The newspapers had cried out that Hubert Lepel's two years were a miserably insufficient punishment for the crime of which he had been guilty; but to Cynthia it seemed as if those two years were an eternity.

She did not talk about him to any one; she interested herself apparently in the affairs of her father's house; she made a thousand occupations for herself in the new land to which she had gone. Occasionally she had a letter--which she dearly prized--from Enid Vane, and in these letters she heard a little now and then about Hubert; but, after Enid's marriage, the letters became less frequent, and at last ceased altogether. And then she knew that the two years were over, and that Hubert must be free.

Free--or dead! She sometimes had a keen darting fear that she would never see his face again. His health had suffered very much in confinement, she had learnt from Enid's letters; and she knew that he had seemed very weak and ill during those terrible days of his trial for manslaughter. She could never think of them without a shiver. How had the two years ended for him? Was he a wreck, without hope without energy, without strength, coming out of prison only to die? Cynthia brooded over these possibilities until sleep fled from her eyes and the color from her cheeks. Her father looked at her now and then with anxious, grieving eyes; but he did not say a word. She noticed however that he greatly advocated the good qualities of a fine young Scotchman called MacPhail, who had lately settled on an estate in the neighborhood, and had shown a great inclination for Cynthia's society.

Westwood was never tired of praising his good looks, his manly ways, his abilities, and his intelligence, and of calculating openly, in his daughter's hearing, the amount of wealth of which he was sure MacPhail was possessed. Cynthia grew impatient of these praises before long.

"Dear father," she said, taking his grizzled head between her hands one day and kissing it, "I like your Mr. MacPhail very well; but I shall get tired of him very soon if you are always praising him so much."

"But you do like him, Cynthy?" said her father, turning round hastily.

"Oh, yes--I think that he is a very estimable young man! I know all his good points by heart; but I can't say that I find him interesting."

"Interesting?" echoed Westwood. "What do you mean, Cynthy? Isn't he clever enough for you?"

"He is clever enough for anybody, no doubt," said Cynthia, with a little laugh. "But he never reads, he never thinks--except about his stock--and he isn't even a gentleman."

"Neither am I, Cynthia, my dear," said her father sorrowfully.

"You, you darling old man," said the girl lightly--"as if you were not one of Nature's gentlemen, and the dearest and noblest of men to boot!

If he were like you, father, I should think twice as much of him;" and she put her arm round his neck and kissed him.

Westwood's face beamed.

"You're not ashamed of your old father?" he said delightedly. "Bless you, my girl! What I shall do when the time comes for me to lose you, I'm sure I don't know!"

"You are not likely to lose me father. I shall probably stay with you always," said Cynthia rather sadly. But she brightened up when she saw his questioning face. "You and I shall always keep house together, shall we not?"

"Don't you think, Cynthia," said he, detaining her as she was about to move away, "that we might take MacPhail into partnership some of these days?"

"Partnership?" she repeated, not seeing his drift at first. "What do you want with a partner, father? Is there too much for you to do? Or haven't you enough capital? Why should you want a partner?"

"It isn't a partner for myself that I'm talking about, my pretty. I want a son--and the partner would be for you. In plain words, Donald MacPhail is head over ears in love with you Cynthia. Couldn't you bring yourself to look upon him as your husband, don't you think?"

"No, I could not," said Cynthia quickly and decisively. "There is only one man whom I could think of--and you know who that one is. If I do not marry him, I will marry nobody at all."

Westwood sighed and looked dispirited, but said no more.

Cynthia exerted herself to be particularly frigid to Mr. MacPhail when he next visited the house, and succeeded so well that the young Scotchman was utterly dismayed by her demeanor, and was not seen there again for many a long day.

Mr. MacPhail was not the only suitor that Cynthia had to send about his business. She was too handsome, too winning, to escape remark in a place where attractive women were rather rare. Her father used afterwards to observe, with a chuckle of delight, that she had had an offer from every eligible young man--and from some that were not eligible--within a circuit of sixty miles around his homestead; but Cynthia did not altogether like the recollection.

They did not often see English newspapers; but at this time Westwood took to poring over any that he could obtain from neighbors or from the nearest town. One day Cynthia saw that a copy of the _Standard_ was lying in a very conspicuous position on her writing-table. She took it up and read the announcement of the death at her own house of Leonora Vane, aged sixty-nine. She wondered a little that Enid had not written to tell her of Miss Vane's death; and then the tears fell slowly from her eyes, as she considered how completely she was now cut off from the Vanes and all their concerns--as completely as if she herself had "passed to where beyond these voices there is peace." The old life was over; she had come to a new world where all her duties lay; and the past, with its vigorous life, its passionate emotions, its intense joys, its bitter pains, existed for her no more.

And yet she could not forget it; absorb herself as she would in household cares, busy herself as she would with her father's requirements and the needs of her poorer neighbors--and for these Cynthia was a centre of all that was beneficent and beautiful--moments would come when the present seemed to her like a dream and the past the only reality. When had she lived so fully as when she knew from Hubert's lips the meaning of his love for her--of her love for him? Life would be dull and gray indeed if it contained no memory of those exquisite, passionate moments! For these, the rest of her existence was a mere setting; and for these she knew well enough that she was glad that she had lived.

Thus she sat thinking, with her cheek upon her hand and the tears wet upon her long dark lashes; and she did not hear the footsteps of any one approaching until her father touched her on the shoulder and said--

"Cynthy, here's visitors!"

Then she looked up. At first she saw only the ruddy, face and reddish hair of the admirable MacPhail, and she rose to her feet with an impatient little sigh. After MacPhail came another neighbor--a tall thin man with a military bearing, generally known as "the Colonel," though it was not clear that he had ever held any rank in the army. And after these two a stranger followed--also a tall man, thin, dark, grave, with eyes that seemed to Cynthia like those of one who had returned from beyond the grave.

A start like a sort of electric shock ran through Cynthia's frame. It was impossible for her to speak, to do more than extend her hand in silence to each of the new-comers. And then she looked once more upon her lover's face--upon the face of Hubert Lepel. In the presence of her father and the two comparative strangers, she could not even utter a word of greeting. Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, and she dared not even raise her eyes.

Hubert seemed at first as tongue-tied as herself; but presently, she heard him talking in a quiet unobtrusive way, as if he and "the Colonel"

were old friends; and it transpired that the two had met during Hubert's previous wanderings in America, and that they had seen a good deal of the world together.

Before long, all four men were busily engaged on a comparison of America and England and in a discussion on contemporary politics, and Cynthia was able to devote herself to household duties and the entertainment of her guests. Hubert was staying in Colonel Morton's house, she found, and they had met Mr. Westwood and MacPhail when they were having a long tramp over the hills; and, strangely enough, Westwood had immediately asked both men to dinner.

It was not until the meal was over and the men had gone out to smoke in the pleasant piazza, with its clustering vines which adorned the front of Westwood's house, that Cynthia had a moment in which to compare her present impressions with her past. It struck her that Hubert looked older, as well as graver and sadder, and perhaps more dignified. His hair was turning gray and thin at the temples; his moustache was also streaked with white--bleached, as Cynthia knew, by trouble, not by age.

He was thin, but he looked stronger than when she saw him last; and his gait was firm and elastic. His face was slightly tanned--probably by the sun and sea-air in his recent expedition from England--and the brown hue gave him a look of health and vigor which he had not possessed in England. But the change in his expression was more striking to Cynthia than any alteration in physical aspect. His eyes had lost their anxious restlessness, his mouth was set as if in steadfast resolution; his brow was calm. He looked like a man who had gone "through much tribulation,"

but had come out victor at the last.