A few days after Edgar Sutherland’s visit to Mount Eden, Jane Peartree walked out for the first time after her illness into the sun. She wore the plain cap and gown of the other inmates of the Home, and even in that simple costume (or rather, perhaps, because of it) she looked strangely beautiful. Leaning on the arm of Adèle Lambert, she passed feebly across the green lawn in front of the house, and gained a garden seat in a quiet walk leading to the home farm.

The day was very mild for winter tide, the sun was shining gently, and here and there from the dark earth a snowdrop was peeping. The air, moreover, was full of that cool, balmy sweetness which so often in our chill climate precedes the resurrection of the spring.

But Jane Peartree was ill at ease. Ever since her encounter with Sutherland she had been strangely fretful and uneasy, and had not her strength failed she would certainly have taken her departure before that day.

As they sat together on the window-seat, her cry was still for speedy flight.

‘I must go to-morrow!—yes, Adèle, to-morrow! I have already stayed too long!’

‘But, madame, you are still so weak. Why should you go so soon?’

‘I cannot stay! I have so far to go,—and—and I shall go mad, I think, if I remain. You are all kind—kinder than I deserve—but it is not that! No, no!’ ‘But where will you go, madame? Have you not told me you have no home—no friends?’

‘I have none—I want none,’ returned Jane Peartree; ‘but all the same, I must leave this place. Here, I feel like a dead woman in her shroud, dead and cold, but being forced back to life, just when I would be left alone to rest for ever. I do not feel at peace. In the night I cannot sleep, and in the day I am afraid. Why should I be sitting here in the sunshine, when by rights I should be lying in my grave?’

Adèle looked at her companion in deep sorrow and pain, and wondered, indeed, if her wits were going, since her words were so incomprehensible and strange. Just then, as they sat side by side, there passed across the lawn, some hundred yards away, the figure of a man, at the sight of whom Adèle brightened, and said, forcing a smile:—

‘Sister Ursula tells me your name is uncommon, even in England; yet you have a namesake yonder, madame.’

‘A namesake?’ repeated Jane Peartree.

‘Yes; one of the gardeners upon the estate. That is he crossing to the shrubberies.’

Jane Peartree turned her weary eyes towards the man, and in a moment her heart leapt up in wondering recognition, her pale face flushed, and she uttered a low cry. Who that had once seen it could fail to remember the little, quaint, old-fashioned figure, the curious gait, of Luke Peartree? Yes, it was Uncle Luke, greyer and older than when, long years before, he led little Madeline home from Grayfleet Churchyard, but still living—‘to brighten the sunshine.’

‘Quick! call him! I must speak to him!’ cried the invalid, rising faintly to her feet.

Adèle ran off instantly after the man, who had disappeared into the shrubberies. Presently she reappeared, the little gnome-like figure trotting by her side. As he came up, clad in............