"Excuse me, ma'am; I oughtn't to have troubled you with my affairs to-night, just when you're enjoying yourself too. But it's hard sometimes to keep quiet." Moved by a sudden instinct of sympathy, Lesley turned and kissed the woman who served her, as if she had been a sister. It was in such ways that she showed her kinship with the man who had written "The Unexplored." Lady Alice, in spite of all her kindness of heart, would never have thought of kissing her ladies' maid. "Don't grieve--don't be sorrowful," said Lesley. "Perhaps things will mend by and by." "Ah, my dear," said Kingston, forgetting her position, as Lady Alice would have said, while that young, soft kiss was warm upon her cheek, "the dead don't come back." And when Lesley had gone downstairs, with the white and scarlet bouquet in her hand, Mary Kingston sat down and wept bitterly. It was not the first time that Lesley had spoken words of consolation to her; but on this occasion her gentleness had gone home to Mary Kingston's heart as it had never done before. After weeping for herself for a time, she fell to weeping for Lesley too, for it seemed inevitable to her that Lesley should suffer before very long. She believed that Lesley was in love with Oliver, and that for this reason only had she refused Maurice Kenyon, which shows that Lesley had kept her own secret very well. "I'd do anything to keep her from harm," said Mary Kingston, with a passionate rush of gratitude towards the girl for her kindly words and ways. "Francis Trent brought me grief enough, God knows; and if she's going to throw herself away on Oliver, she'll have her heart broke sooner than mine. For I've been used to sorrow all my days; and she--poor, pretty lamb--she don't know what it means. And Miss Brooke all taken up with her medicine-fads, and Mr. Brooke only a _man_, after all, in spite of his goodness; and my lady, her mother, far away and never coming near her--if anybody was friendless and forlorn, it's Miss Lesley. Only me between her and her ruin, maybe! But I'll prevent it," said the woman, rising to her feet with a strange look of exaltation in her sunken eyes: "I'll guard her from Oliver Trent as I couldn't guard my own sister, poor lass! I'll see that she does not come to any harm, and if he means ill by her I'll shame him before all the world, even though I break more hearts than one by it."