“How very kind he is,” thought Marion. “I wonder—I wonder, if it could possibly do any good for me to tell him all about it. But no,” she decided, on thinking it over. She had done as much as seemed to her right and fitting. More would be undignified and unmaidenly. And then she was so utterly in the dark. What might not have occurred since she left Altes? Ralph could not be dead; of that she was certain. He could not have died without her knowing it. But a worse thing might have come to pass. At this very moment, for all she knew to the contrary, he might be already the husband of another woman. “Though not in heart,” she said to herself. “He was not the man to love twice. Not at least so quickly. And never while he lives will he love another as he loved me. In this at least he is mine.” Thus she felt in certain moods. There were others, however, in which her faith was less undoubting, in which she almost questioned if she had not exaggerated what he had said; whether after all it had not been with Ralph a much less serious affair than, to her cost, it had been with her? Then again she seemed drawn the other way. His was no slight or shallow nature. Were his depth and earnestness to be doubted, in what could she ever allow herself to believe? And so the poor child was tossed and torn. Still, it came to pass, thanks to Geoffrey Baldwin, that a little more brightness and enjoyment were at this time infused into her daily life. The riding proved a success, and, as her young guardian observed with self-congratulation, “really did bring some colour to her cheeks.” The Copley girls came up to Mr. Baldwin’s favourable account of them, and did their best in the way of showing kindness to “that pretty, pale Miss Vere, that Geoffrey Baldwin is so taken up about.” They were hearty, healthy girls, and both engaged to be married to the most satisfactory partis. Possibly this last had something to say to their cordial reception of their old friend’s interesting ward. The renewal of her acquaintance with the invalid Miss Temple, was also in a different way a source of great pleasure to Marion. Trifling incidents both—her introduction to the Copley girls, and her meeting again with the kind Veronica—but they both influenced her indirectly in the great decision of her life, towards which, though she knew it not, the tide of affairs was rapidly drawing her. CHAPTER VIII. AND RALPH? “Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend Seeking a higher object.” LAODAMIA. “For love and beauty and delight There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure.” THE SENSITIVE PLANT.