"She had much better not be known as Westwood's daughter," said Mrs.

Rumbold, with decision, quite heedless of Cynthia's presence. "It will be against her all her life. I have told Sister Louisa about her, and she asked me to let her be called 'Wood.' 'Jane Wood' is a nice sensible name."

"Well, as you please. You will not mind being called 'Jane,' will you, my dear?" said the Rector, mindful of the red flush that was creeping into the little pale cheeks.

He was a kindly old gentleman, in spite of his slow, absent-minded ways; and there was a very benevolent light in his eyes as he sat in his elbow-chair, newspaper on knee, spectacles on nose, and surveyed the child who had been brought to his study for inspection.

Mrs. Rumbold fairly lost her patience at the question.

"How can you ask her such a thing, Alfred? As if it was her business to mind one way or another! She ought to be thankful that she is so well taken care of without troubling about her name. 'Jane Wood' is a very good name indeed, much better than that silly-sounding 'Cynthia'!"--and Mrs. Rumbold swept the child before her out of the room in a state of high indignation at the stupidity of all men.

So Cynthia Westwood--or Jenny Westwood, as the Beechfield people called her--was transformed into Jane Wood. She did not seem to object to the change. She was in a dazed, stunned state of mind, in which she understood only half of what was said to her, and when the scenes and faces around her made a very slight impression upon her memory. One or two things stood out clearly from the rest. One was Enid Vane's sweet childish face, as she thrust her shilling with the hole in it into the little outcast's hand. Cynthia had carefully hidden the coin away; she was resolved never to spend it. She took it out and looked at it sometimes, feeling, though she could not have put her feelings into words, that it was an actual visible sign of some one's kindness of heart, of some one's love and pity for her. And the other thing was the dark melancholy face of the man who had brought her to the Rectory, and told her to be good for her father's sake.

She liked to think of his face best of all. It was one that she was sure she would never forget. She brooded over it with silent adoration, with a simple faith and confidence in the goodness of its owner, which would have cut him to the heart if he had ever dreamed of it. He had been kind to her; that was all she knew. She rewarded him by the devotion of her whole being. It was surely a great reward for such a little act! She did not know that it was he who was to pay for her going to school, that it was he who had rescued her from the degradation of her outcast life.

Mrs. Rumbold kept her word to Hubert. She talked vaguely in Cynthia's presence of "kind friends" who were doing "so much" for her; but Cynthia associated the idea of "kind friends" with that of Mrs. Rumbold herself, and was not grateful. The child was not old enough, and had been too much stunned by the various experiences of her little life, to be very curious. She did not know Mr. Lepel by name, or why he should be at Beechfield at all. He did not often visit the Vanes, although he saw a good deal of his aunt Leonora in London. He was quite a stranger to half the people in the village.

Also, Cynthia's father, now in prison for the murder of Sydney Vane, had not lived long in Beechfield, and did not know the history and relationships of the Squire's family, as natives of Beechfield were supposed to do. He had been two years in the village, and had rented a tumbledown ruinous cottage by the side of a marshy pond, which no one else would occupy. Here he had lived a lonely life, gathering rushes from the pond and weaving baskets out of them, doing a day's work in the fields now and then, setting snares for rabbits, trapping foxes, and killing game--a man suspected by the authorities, shunned by the village respectabilities, avoided by even those wilder spirits who met at the "Blue Lion" to talk of bullocks and to drink small-beer. For he was not of a genial disposition. He was gruff and surly in speech, given neither to drink nor to conversation--just the sort of man, his neighbors said, to commit a terrible crime, to revenge himself upon a magistrate who had once sent him to gaol for poaching, and had threatened to turn him out of his wretched cottage by the pond.

And his little girl too--the villagers were indignant at the way in which Cynthia was brought up. She was seldom seen in the village school, never at church or in Mrs. Rumbold's Sunday-classes. She was rough, wild, ignorant. Careful village mothers would not let their children play with her, and district-visitors went out of their way to avoid her--for she had been known to fling stones at boys who had come too near, and she laughed in the faces of people who tried to lecture her.

Jenny Westwood was thus very little in the way of hearing Beechfield gossip, or she would have known all about Mr. Lepel and his sister, who acted as Miss Enid's governess, and concerning whose moonlit walks with Miss Enid's "papa" there had already been a good deal of conversation.

She knew nothing of all this. There was a big house a mile from the village, and in this big house lived a wicked cruel man who had sent her father to prison--so much she knew. And her father was now in prison for killing that wicked man. Why should one not kill the person who injures one? It did not seem so very terrible to Cynthia. Before her father had brought her to Beechfield, she remembered, they had travelled a good deal from place to place; and while they were "on the tramp," as her father expressed it, she had seen much of the rougher side of life. She had seen blows given and returned--fighting, violence, bloodshed. She had a vague idea that, if her father had killed Mr. Vane, it was perhaps not the first time that he had taken the life of a fellow-man.

Mrs. Rumbold certainly showed much kindliness and charity in taking this forlorn little girl into her spotless well-regulated household, even for a week, until matters were settled with the authorities of the workhouse which she had quitted and the orphanage to which she was going. The Rectory servants were indignant at having the society of "a murderer's child" forced upon them. If she had stayed much longer, they would have given notice in a body. But fortunately Mrs. Rumbold was able to arrange matters with the Winstead Sisters very speedily, and the day following the funeral of Mrs. Sydney Vane--laid to rest beside her husband only three months after his untimely death--saw Cynthia's little box packed, and herself, arrayed in neat but very unbecoming garments, conveyed by Mrs. Rumbold to the charitable precincts of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage at Winstead, where she was introduced to the black-robed, white-capped Sisters and a crowd of blue-cloaked children like herself as Jane Wood, orphan, from the village of Beechfield, in Hants.

However, Mrs. Rumbold told the whole of Cynthia's story to the Sister in charge of the Orphanage, a sweet-faced motherly woman, who looked as if children were dear to her. The one reservation made by the Rector's wife referred to the person or persons who were to pay the child's expenses.

Their names, she said emphatically, were never to be mentioned. The good Sister smiled, and thought to herself that the very reservation told its own story. Of course it was the Vanes who were thus providing for Cynthia Westwood's continued absence from their village. It was natural perhaps.

She noticed that the child showed no sign of sorrow at parting from Mrs.

Rumbold. She looked white, tired, almost stupefied. Sister Louisa took hold of the little hands, and found them cold and trembling.

When the Rector's wife was gone, the good woman--"the mother of the children," as she was sometimes called--drew the little girl to her knee and kissed her tenderly. It needed very little real affection to call forth a response in Cynthia's yearning heart. She burst into tears and buried her face in the mother's ample bosom, won from that moment to all the claims of love and duty, and a religion of which she as yet had scarcely heard the name.

As time went on, Mrs. Rumbold received letters from Sister Louisa relative to Jane Wood's progress. Jane Wood was, on the whole, a very satisfactory pupil. She was a girl of strong will and strong passions, often in disgrace, and yet a universal favorite. She possessed more than usual ability, and soon caught up with the girls of her own age who had at first been far in advance of her in class; then she surpassed them, and began to attract attention; and at the end of two years Mrs. Rumbold received a letter which perplexed her so sorely, that she sent it at once to Mr. Hubert Lepel, who was still living a bachelor-life in London.

The letter, from Sister Louisa, was to the effect that Jane Wood, the girl from Beechfield, had developed a great talent for music, and seemed very superior to the station of domestic service for which she had been designed. The Sister received twenty or thirty boarders--daughters of gentlemen for the most part, for whom ordinary terms were paid--in addition to the orphans; these girls of a superior class were educated by the Sisters, and often remained at St. Elizabeth's until they were eighteen or nineteen. If the amount paid for Jane Wood could be increased to forty pounds a year, the Sisters proposed to educate her as a governess; with her talent for music and other accomplishments, they were quite sure that the girl would turn out a credit to her kind patrons and patronesses, as well as to St. Elizabeth's.

Mr. Lepel sent back an answer by return of post. Jane Wood--he knew her by no other Christian name--was to have every advantage the good sisters could give her. If she had talents, they were to be cultivated. When she was old enough to be placed out in the world to earn her own living, his allowance would of course cease; till then, and while she wanted help, her friends would provide for her.

"So Westwood's child is to be made a lady of!" said Mrs. Rumbold, laying down the letter with a sense of virtuous indignation. "Well, I hope that Mr. Lepel won't repent it. I wonder what Miss Vane thinks of it?"

But Miss Vane had never even heard the name of Jane Wood.

Hubert Lepel was gradually achieving literary success. But the road to success is often stony and beset with thorns and briars. His name was becoming known as that of a writer of popular fiction; he had a play in hand of which people prognosticated great things. For all these reasons he was much too busy to give any special attention to the affairs of the child at St. Elizabeth's School. He agreed to Sister Louisa's proposition, and sent money for the girl's education--that was all that he could do. And so another year went by, and then another, and he heard nothing more about Jane Wood.

But at the close of a London season, when town was emptying fast and the air was becoming exhausted, and everybody who had a chance of going into the country was sighing to be off, it occurred to Hubert Lepel to wonder how the child that he had befriended was progressing. It took little time for him to make up his mind that he would go down to Winstead and see the school, which was quite a show-place and had been a great deal talked about. A card and a line from a clerical friend would introduce him, and his literary work gave him an excuse for wishing to inspect the institution. It would be supposed that he meant to write an article upon it. He did not intend to say why he had come.

The building occupied by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth was certainly beautiful and picturesque. Hubert remembered with a half smile the enthusiastic praise that Mrs. Rumbold had bestowed upon it. The chapel, an exquisite little gem of Gothic architecture, stood in the centre, flanked by two long gray wings appropriated to the school-girls and their teachers, the Orphanage and the Sisterhood. St. Elizabeth's was becoming quite a noted school for girls, especially among persons of High Anglican proclivities; and in surveying the lovely buildings, the exquisitely-kept grounds, the smooth lawns and shrubberies which met his eyes. Hubert could not but acknowledge that the outer appearance of the place was all that could be desired. The school buildings were swathed in purple clematis and roses; there was a pleasant hum of voices, even of laughter, from some of the deep mullioned windows; and he saw a host of children sporting on the lawn in the distance. The scene was bright, peaceful, and joyous. Hubert Lepel felt a momentary thrill of relief; he had done well for Westwood's child--he need not reproach himself on that score.

A portress with a rosy smiling face admitted him into a visitors' room, a small but cosy place, with vases of flowers on the table, sacred pictures and a black-and-white crucifix on the yellow-washed walls. Here a Sister clad in conventual garb came to inquire his business. The stillness of the house, the unfamiliar aspect of the women's dresses, reminded Hubert of some French and Flemish Romanist convents which he had visited abroad. He was charmed with the likeness. It was something, he said to himself, to find such serenity, such sweet placidity of life, possible in the very midst of nineteenth-century England, with all her turmoil and bustle and distraction. He did not discuss with himself the question as to whether the life led by the inmates of these retreats was wholesome or agreeable; it was simply on the aesthetic side that its aspect pleased him. He could fancy himself for a moment in the depths of a foreign land or far back in remote mediaeval times.

Could he see the buildings, the church, the school, the orphanage? Oh, certainly! Sister Agnes, who had come to him, would be pleased to show him everything.

She was very pleasant in manner, and he had no difficulty in obtaining from her any amount of information about the institution. It seemed that he had by chance come on a festival day, and every one was making holiday. The children were all out in the fields or the garden; he could see their schoolrooms and dormitories and refectory. They were all rather bare, exquisitely clean and airy, full of the most recent improvements as regarded educational appliances.

"This is the Orphanage building," Sister Agnes explained. "We do not generally show the class-rooms belonging to the other school; but, as all the ladies are out, you may see them if you like."

So Hubert peeped into the rooms, occupied by the girl-boarders, who were on a very different footing from the orphans, and whose surroundings, though simple, were almost elegant in their simplicity. The furniture was of good artistic design, the windows were emblazoned in jewel-like colors, the proportions of the rooms were stately as those of an Oxford college hall. Hubert smiled a little at the picture of Westwood's ragged daughter amidst all this magnificence.

Last of all he was shown the chapel, the most beautiful building of the place, and on this day in particular largely decorated with the choicest flowers.

As they were coming out, a bell began to ring, and presently they met a procession of school-girls, all dressed alike in white frocks and broad hats, on their way to some afternoon service of prayer and praise.

Hubert scanned their faces heedfully as they passed by, but he could not find one amongst them that reminded him of the thin little countenance, the gipsy eyes of the convict Westwood's child.

He could not resist the temptation to ask a question.

"Have you not here," he said, "a girl called Jane Wood?"

Sister Agnes gazed at him in astonishment, and the tears suddenly rushed into her eyes.

"Do you know anything of Jane Wood?" she cried excitedly. "Oh, you ask for her at a very critical time! She has been with us four years, and we loved her as our own child; but she ran away from us two days ago, and we have not seen her since!"

CHAPTER IX.

"What do you mean?" said Hubert, starting in his turn. "The girl gone?"

Sister Agnes was in tears already.

"Let me fetch Sister Louisa or the Reverend Mother to you?" she cried.

"They know all about it--as far as anybody can know anything. You--you are one of her friends, perhaps? Oh, the dear child--and we loved her so dearly!"

Hubert was looking pale and stern. He had stopped short on the gravelled pathway, half-way between the chapel and the entrance to the school. The beauty, the interest of the place was lost upon him at once. He cared only to hear what had become of the child whom he had fondly imagined himself to be benefiting. If she had been unhappy, if she had run away into the wide world on account of ill-treatment by her teachers and fellow-pupils, was he not to blame? He ought to have come to the place before and made inquiries, not left her fate to the light words of Mrs.

Rumbold or some unknown Sister Louisa. He had made himself responsible for her education; was he not in some sort responsible for her happiness as well?

These questionings made his face look very dark and grave as he stood once more in the visitors' room, awaiting the arrival of the lady whom Sister Agnes had called Sister Louisa, and whose letters to Mrs. Rumbold he remembered that he had read.

He felt himself prejudiced against her before she arrived; but, when he saw her, he was compelled to own that she had a very attractive countenance. The face itself, framed in its setting of white and black, was long and pale, but beautiful by reason of its sweetness of expression; the gray eyes were full of tenderness, yet full of grief.

There were marks of tears upon her face--the only one that the visitor had seen that was at all dolorous; and yet, noting her serene brow and gentle lips, Hubert, man of the world as he was, and more ready to cavil and despise than to admire, said to himself that, if any woman could make a young girl love her, surely this woman would not fail!

"You wish," she said, "to ask some questions about our pupil Jane Wood?"

"I do indeed. I am very much surprised to hear that she has left you."

"May I ask whether you have any authority from our friend Mrs. Rumbold to inquire?"

"Mrs. Rumbold takes her authority from me," said Hubert quietly.