bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the
old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to take
some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the young
girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the
precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.

At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.

"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long----"

Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman, with
a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very marked
at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times long past
rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to say
something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her into the
broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning round
with the same bewildered air--

"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"

"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr.
Helbeck please help me with these things?"

She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to her
aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house, which
she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of
two-and-twenty, he had forgotten her stepdaughter.

But Miss Fountain did not intend to be forgotten. She made him relieve
her of all burdens, and then argue an overcharge with the flyman. And at