When John Brancker had brought his narrative to a close, Hermia sat awhile without speaking. Then she got up, and flinging her arms round John's neck, she kissed him twice very tenderly; then she crossed to the opposite side of the fireplace and did the same to Aunt Charlotte.

"Whoever my unknown relatives may be," she said, with a little catch in her breath, "they cannot care greatly about me. They chose to cast me off when I was a child, and they are evidently determined that I shall never know more about them than I do now. Why should I care more for them than they do for me, or, indeed, trouble myself about them in any way? If they were to make themselves known to-morrow, I could never learn to love them as I love you, my dear uncle and aunt--for I shall still continue to be your niece, shall I not?--as I have always been. Nothing you have told me can change or alter in any way the relationship between us, or cause me to love you one whit less than I have always loved you. To you I owe everything; to my unknown relatives, nothing. As for the money, it belongs of right to you, and yours it must and shall be. Not one shilling of it will I ever touch."

"My dear--my dear, that is a very rash thing of you to say. Consider----"

"No, aunt, I won't consider; it is a thing about which no consideration is needed. This money was given to Uncle John to help pay for my keep, and clothes, and education, and by every law of right and justice it belongs to him and to him alone."

"I could not touch it, my dear--that is quite out of the question. The idea of being paid for bringing you up! Such money would seem to me like a contamination.

"What, then, would it seem like to me?"

"But consider, my dear," again urged Miss Brancker, "what a nice little fortune it will make for you if you ever get married."

At these words a vivid blush suffused Hermia's cheeks.

"If I ever get married it will be to someone who knows my history, or rather, as much of it as any of us knows, and if he would demean himself so far as to accept a farthing of that money--well, if he were to do so I should never care for him again."

"It seems such a pity, such a very great pity," murmured Miss Brancker. "John and I have been congratulating ourselves all these years on the nice little nest-egg you would have when you came of age; and now, to think----!" She ended with a sigh.

"Dear Aunt Charlotte, cannot you see, cannot you understand, how entirely out of the question it is that I should touch this money?"

"It is equally out of the question that John or I should touch it."

"In that case, when Mr. Hodgson calls next at the Cottage I will bid him take back his money, and tell him that we will have none of it, and that if he never troubles himself to visit us again none of us will regret his absence. We don't want his money, and we don't want to know his secret. My relatives chose to disown me when I was a helpless child; now that I am grown up, I disown them!"

Frank Derison's letter to Hermia had come as a sort of shock to her, but it was a shock of pleasurable surprise. She had known for some time past that the image of another had usurped in her heart the place she had once believed to be Frank's, but which she had since discovered had never been his in reality. She had mistaken liking for love, as she had not been long in finding out when once the real and not the sham Eros had aimed one of his shafts at her; and a growing certainty had taken possession of her that if, at the end of the twelve months, Frank should press her to make the bond between them "a nearer one still and a dearer one," there would be no response to his wish in her heart. How foolish she had been! How severely she blamed herself, now that her eyes were opened, for having ever dreamed that she really loved him! It would be painful, very painful, to have to confess her mistake, but if he were to press his suit no other course would be open to her.

The twelve months which were to bring the secret engagement to an end in one form or another had terminated during the time of John's imprisonment. At a season of such deep trouble all thoughts of love and matrimony were out of the question, but the moment John's acquittal was an assured fact Hermia began to dread that which might come to pass at any moment. The infrequency and shortness of Frank's visits to the Cottage during the time of John's absence, and the impossibility of not seeing how forced was the sympathy displayed by him on those occasions, had tended still more to open Hermia's eyes; as a consequence of which, when Frank's letter came to hand its contents filled her with a sense of glad relief. She could not refrain from kissing the letter, so unfeigned was her joy at the news it brought her. There was nothing now to hinder her from loving as much as she liked, even though her love should never be returned, nor he who was the secret object of it so much as suspect its existence. Just now she asked for nothing beyond that--to love in secret as much as she liked.

Clement Hazeldine had not omitted to note how few and far between Frank Derison's visits to Nairn Cottage had been of late, and he did not fail to draw a happy augury therefrom. Up to the date of John's imprisonment, Clem had rarely gone to the Cottage without either finding Frank there before him, or leaving him there when he went away; but after that event, they seldom encountered each other. After all, as Clem told himself, it might well be that he had been mistaken, and that there had never been any secret understanding, as he had all along tormented himself with believing there was, between Frank and Hermia. Thus it fell out that John Brancker had not been many days back at home before Clem made up his mind to seize the first opportunity which might offer itself, and ascertain his fate once for all. His practice so far had not proved a very lucrative one, but it was growing steadily month by month, and old Dr. Finchdown had himself told him that he intended to retire in the course of next spring, and would recommend Clem strongly to all his best patients, as his successor, so that, what with one thing and another, he seemed to see a reasonable prospect of being able to take to himself a wife in eighteen months, or, at the most, two years from then. The more he saw of Hermia, the more strongly he felt to what an extent his future happiness was bound up with her.

The Fates are often kind to lovers, and seem to provide opportunities for them, as if of set purpose; at least, so Clem thought when, two or three evenings later, he found himself alone with Hermia. John had gone next door to sit with Mr. Kittaway, who was confined to the house by an attack of gout, and Clem had not been ten minutes at the Cottage before Miss Brancker remembered that when shopping, during the afternoon, she had quite forgotten to buy some silk of the particular shade which she needed before she could put another stitch in the crewel-work, over the intricacies o............