“Dunallen; has he been here?” and Anna blushed painfully. But Adam was not looking at her. He had never associated the heir of Castlewild with Anna’s changed demeanor, and wholly unconscious of the pain he was inflicting, he went on, “He went all over the house this morning, except indeed in here. I could not admit him to the room where mother died. Did I tell you that he had hired me for a long and profitable job? He is going to make some repairs at Castlewild before he brings home his bride. You know he is engaged to a young heiress, Mildred Atherton.” It was well for Anna that her face was turned from Adam as she replied, “Yes, I’ve heard something of an engagement made by the family when he was a mere boy. I thought perhaps he had tired of it.” “Oh, no; he told me only to-day that he expected to bring his wife to Castlewild as early as Christmas. We were speaking of you and our marriage.” “Of me?” and Anna looked up quickly, but poor, deluded Adam, mistook her guilty flush for a kind of grateful pride that Dunallen should talk of her. “He said you were the prettiest girl he ever saw, and when I suggested, ‘except Miss Atherton,’ he added, ‘I will not except any one; Milly is pretty, but not like your _fiancee_.’” Anna had not fallen so low that she could not see how mean and dastardly it was for Herbert Dunallen to talk thus of her to the very man he was intending to wrong so cruelly; and for a moment a life with Adam Floyd looked more desirable than a life with Herbert Dunallen, even though it were spent in the midst of elegance of which she had never dreamed. Anna’s good angel was fast gaining the ascendency, and might have triumphed had not the sound of horse’s feet just then met her ear, and looking from the window she saw Herbert Dunallen riding by, his dark curls floating in the wind and his cheek flushing with exercise. He saw her, too, and quickly touching his cap, pointed adroitly towards the beechwood grove. With his disappearance over the hill her good angel flew away, and on her face there settled the same cold, unhappy look, which had troubled Adam so much. “Darling,” he said, when he spoke again, “there is something on your mind which I do not understand. If you are to be my wife, there should be no secrets between us. Will you tell me what it is, and if I can help you I will, even though—though——” His voice began to falter, for the white, hard look on Anna’s face frightened him, and at last in an agony of terror, he grasped both her hands in his and added impetuously: