"Come here, Annabel, my dear," she said, turning to a young girl who sat in a little low rocker by the sewing machine, "and welcome Miss Bain." A slim, slight girl, in a jaunty blue cloth dress edged with white, rose and came curiously forward, extending a little brown hand to Jessie. "I am very glad to see you, Miss Bain," she said; "for Frank has talked of you so much." "Won't you please call me Jessie?" returned the other. "No one has ever called me Miss Bain before." "Nothing would please me better," returned Annabel. They spent a very pleasant evening, and then Annabel took Jessie off to her room with her for the night. Long after the two girls had retired Mrs. Moray and her son sat talking the matter over, and it was not long before Mrs. Moray discovered that her boy was deeply in love with pretty Jessie Bain. Of course, like himself, she felt perfectly sure that the girl was entirely innocent of what she had been accused of by Mrs. Varrick. But the very idea of the theft sent a thrill of horror through her heart. She must discourage her son's love for the girl, for she would rather see him dead and buried than wedded to one upon whose fair name ever so slight a stain rested. She said to herself that the girl's stay beneath their cottage roof must be cut as short as possible. It was decided that Jessie Bain should remain at the cottage of the Morays until she had ample time to write to her uncle and receive his reply. Jessie mailed her letter before she went to sleep that night. Annabel easily dropped off to slumber, but it was not so with Jessie; for had not this been the most eventful day of her life? How she wished Mrs. Varrick had not exacted a promise from her that she would never again hold any communication with her son Hubert! Would he believe her guilty when he returned home and his mother told him all that had transpired? She could imagine the horror on his face as he listened; and this thought was so bitter to Jessie that she cried herself to sleep over it. The third day of her stay a letter from her uncle came to her. Her cousin was married and gone away, he wrote, and he would be only too glad to forget and forgive by-gones. Two days later, Frank Moray saw her safely on the train which would take her as far as Clayton, where her uncle promised to meet her. "If I write to you sometimes, will you answer my letters, little Jessie?" asked Frank Moray, as he found her a seat in a well-crowded car, and bent over her for the last glance into the girl's beautiful, wistful face. "Yes," she answered, absently. For a moment his hand closed over hers; he looked at her with his whole soul in his honest eyes, then he turned and quickly left her. He stood on the platform and watched her sweet face at the window until the train was out of sight, then he moved slowly away.