No; I'm afraid I have never worked hard enough for that. The need will come, perhaps, later—when the work comes.'

On more than one occasion when Ida talked of the Abbey, Mr. Wendover replied in the same tone. It was evident that he was indifferent to the family seat, or that he even disliked it. He had no pride in surroundings which might have inspired another man.

'One would think you had been frightened by the family ghost,' Ida said laughingly, 'you so studiously avoid talking about the Abbey.'

'I have not been frightened by the ghost—I am too modern to believe in ghosts.'

'Oh, but it is modern to believe in everything impossible—spirit-rapping, thought-reading.'

'Perhaps; but I am not of that temper.' And then, with a graver look than
Ida had ever seen in his face, he said, 'You are full of enthusiasm about
that old place among the hills, Ida. I hope you do not care more for the
Abbey than for me.'
She crimsoned and looked down. The question touched her weakness too nearly.

'Oh, no,' she faltered; 'what are cedars and limestone as compared with humanity?'

'And if I were without the Abbey—if the Abbey and I were nothing to each other—should I be nobody in your sight?'

'It is difficult to dissociate a man from his surroundings,' she answered; 'but I suppose you would be just the same person?'

'I hope so,' said Brian. '"The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man's a man for a' that." But the guinea stamp is an uncommonly good thing in its way, I admit.'

These afternoon promenades between four and five o'clock, while the rest of the school was out walking, had been going on for a fortnight, and no harm to Ida had come of her indiscretion. Perhaps she hardly considered how wrong a thing she was doing in violating Miss Pew's confidence by conduct so entirely averse from Miss Pew's ideas of good behaviour. The confidence had been so grudgingly given, Miss Pew had been so systematically unkind, that the girl may be forgiven for detesting her, nay, even for glorying in the notion of acting in a manner which would shock all Miss Pew's dearest prejudices. Her meeting with her lover could scarcely be called clandestine, for she took very little pains to conceal the fact. If the affair had gone on secretly for
