But she was non-committal, baffling, from first to last. She would admit nothing, explain nothing, confess nothing. She defied them all. * * * * * On the following morning, at the Warburton Mansion, a happy group assembled to hear, from Mr. Follingsbee, all that was not already known to them of Stanhope's story. How it was told, let the reader, who knows all, and knows Mr. Follingsbee, imagine. Leslie was there, fair and pale, robed once more in the soft, rich garments that so well became her. Alan was there, handsome and humble. He had made, so far as he could in words, manly amends to Leslie, and she had forgiven him freely at last. Winnie too, was there, obstinately avoiding Alan's glance, and keeping close to Leslie. Mrs. French was there, smiling and motherly. And little Daisy was there, the centre of their loving glances. In her childish way, the little one had told all that she could of her captivity. She had gone to sleep upon the balcony of her Papa's house and in the arms of "Mother Goose." She had awakened in a big, dark room, whose windows were tightly shuttered, and where she could see nothing but a tiny bit of sky. A negress, who frightened her very much, had brought her food, and sat in the room sometimes. She had been lonely, terrified, desolate. The little that she could tell threw no light upon the mystery of her hiding-place, but it was all that they ever knew. "I used to pray and pray," said Daisy, "but God didn't seem to hear me at all. And when I woke in that little room that smelled so bad--it was worse than the other--I just felt I must _make_ God hear, so I prayed, oh, so loud, and then the door broke in, and that nice, funny man picked me up, and there was Mamma; and only think! God might have let me out long before if I had only prayed loud enough." When Leslie learned her own story, and was brought face to face with her father, her cup of joy was full indeed. She was at anchor at last, with some one to love her beyond all others; with some one to love and to render happy. "Oh," she said, "to know that my dear adopted parents were after all my own kindred; my uncle and my aunt! What caprice of their evil natures prompted those wretches to do me this one kindness?" "They knew where to find the Ulimans," said her father, "and knew that they were wealthy. It was the easiest way to dispose of you." "I suppose so," she assented, sighing as she thought of those dear ones dead; smiling again as she looked in the face of her new-found father. In the present confidence, the happiness and peace, that surrounded her, Winnie French could not continue her perverse _role_, nor, indeed, was Alan the man to permit it. She had let him see into her heart, in that moment when he had seemed in such deadly peril, and he smiled down her pretty after-defiance.