Devereaux\'s thoughts clung persistently to Liane. He could not shut away from his mind her haunting image.

Pity blended with tenderness, as putting himself and his own disappointment aside, he gave himself up to thoughts of bettering her poverty-stricken life, so toilsome and lonely.

He took up his pen and wrote feelingly to Edmund Clarke, telling him how and where he had found Liane again, and of his full belief in her purity and innocence, despite the cruel slanders circulating in Stonecliff, the work, no doubt, he said, of some jealous, unscrupulous enemy.

He assured Mr. Clarke that he was ready to assist in any way he might suggest in bettering the fair young girl\'s hard lot in life.

The letter was immediately posted, and went on its fateful way to fall into jealous Roma\'s hands and work a harvest of woe.

Affairs at Cliffdene were already in a critical stage, and it wanted but this letter to fan the smoldering flames into devastating fury.

[Pg 201]

Mr. Clarke, impatient of his lingering convalescence, had taken a decisive step toward recovering his lost daughter.

He had written a letter summoning old Doctor Jay, of Brookline, on a visit, and he had explained it to his wife by pretending he wished to avail himself of the old man\'s medical skill.

Doctor Jay was the physician who had attended Mrs. Clarke when her daughter was born, and he received a warm welcome at Cliffdene, a guest whom all delighted to honor; all, at least, but Roma, who immediately conceived an unaccountable aversion to the old man, perhaps because his little hazel-gray eyes peered at her so curiously through his glasses beneath his bushy gray eyebrows.

There was something strange in his intent scrutiny, so coldly curious, instead of kindly, as she had a right to expect, and she said pettishly to her mother:

"I detest Doctor Jay. I hope he is not going to stay long."

"Oh, no, I suppose not, but I am very fond of Doctor Jay. He was very kind and sympathetic to me at a time of great suffering and trouble,"[Pg 202] Mrs. Clarke replied so warmly that she aroused Roma\'s curiosity.

"Tell me all about it," she exclaimed.

Mrs. Clarke had never been able to recall that time without suffering, but she impulsively told Roma the whole story, never dreamed of until now, of the loss of her infant and its mysterious restoration at the last moment, when her life was sinking away hopelessly into eternity.

Roma listened with startled attention, and she began to ask questions that her mother found impossible to answer.

"Who had stolen away the babe, and by what agency had it been restored?" demanded Roma.

Mrs. Clarke could not satisfy her curiosity. The subject was so painful her husband would never discuss it with her, she declared, adding that Roma must not think of it any more, either.

But, being in a reminiscent mood, she presently told Roma how she had been deceived in old Granny Jenks\' identity, and how indignantly the old woman had denied the imputation of having been her nurse.

"I was so sure of her identity that her anger was quite embarrassing," she said.

Roma\'s thoughts returned to granny\'s affection[Pg 203] for herself, and she felt sure the old woman had lied to her mother, though from what object she could not conceive. Her abject affection for herself seemed fully explained by the fact of her having been her nurse child.

But she was, somehow, ill at ease after hearing her mother\'s story, and longed eagerly to know more than she had already heard.

"I wonder if I dare question papa or the old doctor?" she thought when her mother had left her alone, resting easily in her furred dressing gown and slippers before a bright coal fire, while in the room beyond Dolly Dorr was getting her bath ready.

Roma was devoured by curiosity. She sat racking her brain for a pretext to intrude on her father and the old doctor, who were still in the library together, chatting over old times when the Clarkes had lived in Brookline.

A lucky thought came to her, and she murmured:

"I will pretend to have a headache, and ask Doctor Jay for something to ease it. Then I will stay a while chatting with them and making myself very agreeable until I can bring the subject[Pg 204] around, and get the interesting fact of my abduction out of them."

Stealing noiselessly from the room, she glided downstairs like a shadow, pausing abruptly at the hall table, for there lay the evening\'s mail, just brought in by a servant from the village post office.

Roma turned over the letters and papers, finding none for any one but her father, but the superscription on one made her start with a stifled cry.

She recogni............