“Which he will do before three days are passed,” dropped involuntarily from the lips of Mr. Huntington. Then with a wild, startled look he grasped his daughter’s arm, exclaiming: “Forget what I just said—breathe not a word of it to any one, for Heaven knows I would help it if I could. But it is too late—too late.” It was in vain that Adelaide and her mother sought an explanation of these strange words. Mr. Huntington would give none, and in unbroken silence he accompanied his daughter to the house of Mr. Warren. Very cordially Alice welcomed the young girl striving in various ways to relieve her from the embarrassment she would naturally feel at finding herself among so many strangers. And Adelaide _was_ ill at ease, for the spirit of jealous envy in her heart whispered to her of slight and insult where none were intended; whispered, too, that her muslin dress which, at home with her mother and Aunt Peggy to admire, had been so beautiful, was nothing, compared with the soft, flowing robes of Alice Warren, whose polite attentions she construed into a kind of patronizing pity exceedingly annoying to one of her proud nature. Then, as she remembered her father’s words, she thought, “_We may be equals yet._ I wonder what he meant? I mean to ask him again,” and passing through the crowded apartments she came to the little ante-room, where all the evening her father had been sitting—a hard, dark look upon his face, and his eyes bent on the floor, as if for him that festive scene possessed no interest. “Father,” she said, but he made her no reply; he did not even know that she was standing at his side. Far back through the “past” his thoughts were straying, to the Christmas Eve when penniless, friendless and alone he had come to the city, asking employment from one whose hair was not as white then as it was now, and whose eyes were not quenched in darkness, but looked kindly down upon him, as the wealthy merchant said: “I will give you work as long as you do well.” Hugo Warren was older than William Huntington, and his station in life had always been different, but over the mountain side the same Sunday bell had once called them both to the house of God—the same tall tree on the river bank bore on its bark their names—the same blue sky had bent above their childhood’s home, and for this reason he had given the poor young man a helping hand, aiding him step by step, until now, he was the confidential clerk—the one trusted above all others—for when the blindness first came upon him the helpless man had put his hand on William’s head, saying, as he did so: “I trust _you_, with my all, and as you hope for Heaven, do not be false to the trust.”