does not know?"

"No; and I think she is a good deal better this morning. She has been
very bad all week; only she would not let me send for you. She is
really getting well now; I'm sure of that!"

"Thank God!" And then Miss Hilary began to weep.

Elizabeth also was thankful, even for those tears, for she had been
perplexed by the hard, dry-eyed look of misery, deeper than anything
she could comprehend, or than the circumstances seemed to warrant.

It was deeper. The misery was not only Ascott's arrest; many a lad
has got into debt and got out again--the first taste of the law
proving a warning to him for life; but it was this ominous "beginning
of the end." The fatal end--which seemed to overhang like a
hereditary cloud, to taint as with hereditary disease, the Leaf
family.

Another bitterness (and who shall blame it, for when love is really
love, have not the lovers a right to be one another's first
thought?)--what would Robert Lyon say? To his honest Scotch nature
poverty was nothing; honor every thing. She knew his horror of debt
was even equal to her own. This, and her belief in his freedom from
all false pride, had sustained her against many doubts lest he might
think the less of her because of her present position--might feel
ashamed could he see her sitting at her ledger in that high desk, or
even occasionally serving in the shop.

Many a time things she would have passed over lightly on her own