myself--I could have justified anything, I fear! I vowed a vow that she
would be repaid for the waiting as never woman yet was paid. She wept on
my shoulder and said, 'And you really do love me, Harry--and you'll
swear mother need never know?'

"I swore it. There were to be no letters. Molly was too terrified to
write and still more terrified of receiving a letter. She would live in
constant dread, she said, if there were a possibility of such a thing.
Weak in everything else she was adamant in this.

"I went back to work. I worked with the strength of ten. Health,
comfort, pleasure, all were subordinated to the fever of work. I hoped
that I might steal a glimpse of her sometimes. She promised to try to
return to Toronto. But my letter must have alarmed the mother. I found
out, indirectly, that shortly after her return, Mrs. Weston whisked her
off to Europe. They were gone a year. When they returned I was in the
far west with a government surveying party, earning something to help me
with my last year's college expenses. When I was again in Toronto she
had vanished. Gone, as I afterward learned, to stay with an aunt in
California. Her mother, alive to danger, was not going to risk a
meeting, and my vow to Molly left me helpless. But how I worked!

"That last year things began to come my way. Adela married a fine young
fellow, wealthy and generous. My mother went to live with them in their
western home, Calgary, where they still are. Then Thomas Callandar, my
mother's brother, who had never bothered about any of us living, died,
and left me a handsome property, adding, as you already know, the
condition that I take the family name. You remember that my father's
name, the name under which I married Molly, was Chedridge.