Nothing more was said, then or later. No one else came forward for her, and the matter dwindled down into a recollection of the past. Edina got over the cruel blow in time, but it exercised an influence upon her still. And that had been Edina Raynor's romance in life, and its ending. CHAPTER VIII. ROSE-COLOURED DREAMS. The sweet spring sunshine lay upon Trennach, and upon Dr. Raynor's surgery. Francis Raynor stood in it, softly whistling. Two sovereigns lay on the square table, amongst the small scales and the drugs and the bottles, and he was looking down upon them somewhat doubtfully. He wanted to convey this money anonymously to a certain destination, and hardly knew how to accomplish it. Sovereigns were not at all plentiful with Frank; but he would, in his open-heartedness, have given away the last he possessed, and never cast regret after it. "I know!" he suddenly cried, taking up a sheet of white paper. "I'll pack them up in an envelope, direct it to her, stick a stamp on it, and get Gale the postman to deliver it on his round. Dame Bell is as unsuspicious as the day, and will think the money is sent by Rosaline--as the last was. As to Gale--he is ready to do anything for me and Uncle Hugh: he gets his children doctored for nothing. It's a shame he is so badly paid, poor fellow!" Several weeks had gone on since the disappearance of Josiah Bell, and it was now close upon May. Bell had never returned: nothing could be heard of him. Mrs. Bell knew not what to make of it: she was a calm-natured, unemotional woman, and she took the loss more easily than some wives might have taken it. Bell was missing: she could make neither more nor less of it than that: he might come back some time, and she believed he _would_ do so: meanwhile she tried to do the best she could without him. In losing him, she had lost the good wages he earned, and they had been the home's chief support. She possessed a very small income of her own, which she received quarterly--and this had enabled them to live in a better way than most of the other miners--but this alone was not sufficient to keep her. A managing, practical woman, Mrs. Bell had at once looked out for some way of helping herself in the dilemma, and found it. She took in two of the unmarried miners as lodgers--one of them being Andrew Float, and she began to knit worsted stockings for sale. "I shall get along somehow till Bell returns," was her cheerful remark to the community.