To Jack’s suggestion that she tell her aunt of her marriage, at least, she turned a deaf ear. No one must know that. To go to New York as a widow with a child would seriously mar her plans, and then in the winning, fascinating way she knew so well how to use, she persuaded Jack into taking an oath that he never would reveal her secret to any living person unless she first gave him permission to do so. From her step-mother a promise of silence was all she could obtain, but she knew Mrs. Heyford well enough to feel sure that she was safe; and casting the past behind her, she said good-by to Jack, her mother, and Annie, and went with her aunt, who had no suspicion that the beautiful young creature, who seemed so soft, and gentle, and innocent, had a hidden history, from which she would have shrunk in dismay. What Mrs. Burton hated she hated cordially, and what she loved she loved as cordially, and she lavished upon her niece all the affection which she had withheld from her sister and both her husbands. At first she had her taught at home under her own eye, and then when she felt that she had acquired a little of the polish and knowledge of the world, which would be expected from Mrs. Freeman Burton’s daughter, she sent her to a fashionable boarding-school, from which she emerged a finished young lady, and became a belle at once. Her after career is so well known to the reader that it is useless to repeat it here, though Jack told Maude of the deep love there had always existed between his sister and the little Annie, who worshipped her as some superior being; “and I loved her, too,” he said, as he finished the sad story, to which Maude had listened wonderingly, “loved her as few brothers have ever loved their sisters. I knew she had many and glaring faults, and sometimes in my anger I was almost desperate in my feelings toward her, but a touch of her hand, a tone of her voice, or a beseeching glance of her eye, had power to quiet me at once, and I would almost have walked over burning coals for her sake, when in her softest mood. I knew, too, that she loved me,—honestly, truly loved me,—and now that she is gone it is a comfort to remember it, for there were times when I was very harsh with her. Poor Georgie; in many things she was a splendid woman, and though she greatly erred, I feel that at the last she was sorry for it and repented most sincerely, and I believe she is in heaven now, with Annie and my mother.”