She opened her desk directly, and had just commenced her epistle, when Mrs. Wilson tapped at the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, my dear, but here is a note Mr. Aylwinne asked me to give you. He has been waiting for more than an hour to see you, but could not stay longer.” “Has he left Orwell Court again?” asked Florence, with a dismayed conviction that if it were so he went to avoid her. “Yes, my dear. Business in the north has called him away. Very unfortunate, isn’t it, just as he was so comfortable with us? However, I’ll not keep you from reading your note.” But it laid before her unopened long after Mrs. Wilson quitted the room. With eyes fixed on the bold superscription, she sat, as if unable to nerve herself to learn what lay beneath. At last she seized and tore it open. “I cannot leave home,” it ran, “without expressing my fears that, by my selfish recurrence to the past, I have wounded not only your feelings, but your delicacy. I ought to have preserved a rigid silence upon what has happened; but I believed till last night that you knew me, and that, even though shrinking from an open recognition, you felt that beneath my roof there was a refuge from all such earthly troubles as a faithful friend’s care can avert. If it were not so then, let it be so now. Try to forget anything I may have said with reference to my own feelings, and look upon me as what I earnestly wish to be to you--a brother in whose hands you may fearlessly trust your future. “I may not return to Orwell Court for months--perhaps not for a year or two. But a letter directed to my bankers will always find me, if you should require advice or assistance from “Yours most faithfully, “FRANK DORMER AYLWINNE.” Florence dashed away a tear as she folded this letter and put it away in her desk, but her cheek was crimson with resentment. “He is too careful to make me comprehend that the old affection has entirely died out. He means to stay away until I have accustomed myself to this; perhaps till I have reconciled myself to seeing a fairer and wealthier bride brought here to fill the place that should have been mine. But he shall never know how much this costs me. I will go to Aunt Margaret as soon as she consents to receive me, and see him no more.” CHAPTER XV. THE STORM. When Florence’s letter to Mrs. Blunden had been written and dispatched, she felt calmer, and was able to go through her daily duties with an appearance of cheerfulness. No one guessed the soreness at her heart when the boys spoke of their absent guardian, or Mrs. Wilson lamented his erratic habits, concluding with: “It’s such a pity he doesn’t marry, isn’t it? So fond of children as he is, and so generous and gentle with all women, he would make an excellent husband, wouldn’t he?” “Perhaps Mr. Aylwinne is already engaged,” Florence suggested, with her head bent over her work. Mrs. Wilson meditated.