"You're not ashamed of your old father?" he said delightedly. "Bless you, my girl! What I shall do when the time comes for me to lose you, I'm sure I don't know!" "You are not likely to lose me father. I shall probably stay with you always," said Cynthia rather sadly. But she brightened up when she saw his questioning face. "You and I shall always keep house together, shall we not?" "Don't you think, Cynthia," said he, detaining her as she was about to move away, "that we might take MacPhail into partnership some of these days?" "Partnership?" she repeated, not seeing his drift at first. "What do you want with a partner, father? Is there too much for you to do? Or haven't you enough capital? Why should you want a partner?" "It isn't a partner for myself that I'm talking about, my pretty. I want a son--and the partner would be for you. In plain words, Donald MacPhail is head over ears in love with you Cynthia. Couldn't you bring yourself to look upon him as your husband, don't you think?" "No, I could not," said Cynthia quickly and decisively. "There is only one man whom I could think of--and you know who that one is. If I do not marry him, I will marry nobody at all." Westwood sighed and looked dispirited, but said no more. Cynthia exerted herself to be particularly frigid to Mr. MacPhail when he next visited the house, and succeeded so well that the young Scotchman was utterly dismayed by her demeanor, and was not seen there again for many a long day. Mr. MacPhail was not the only suitor that Cynthia had to send about his business. She was too handsome, too winning, to escape remark in a place where attractive women were rather rare. Her father used afterwards to observe, with a chuckle of delight, that she had had an offer from every eligible young man--and from some that were not eligible--within a circuit of sixty miles around his homestead; but Cynthia did not altogether like the recollection. They did not often see English newspapers; but at this time Westwood took to poring over any that he could obtain from neighbors or from the nearest town. One day Cynthia saw that a copy of the _Standard_ was lying in a very conspicuous position on her writing-table. She took it up and read the announcement of the death at her own house of Leonora Vane, aged sixty-nine. She wondered a little that Enid had not written to tell her of Miss Vane's death; and then the tears fell slowly from her eyes, as she considered how completely she was now cut off from the Vanes and all their concerns--as completely as if she herself had "passed to where beyond these voices there is peace." The old life was over; she had come to a new world where all her duties lay; and the past, with its vigorous life, its passionate emotions, its intense joys, its bitter pains, existed for her no more.