"It is best to be upon the safe side;" she said to herself, "Aveline is gaining strength; but Mr. Lindsay may point out some means that would escape me. He is so clever, and has known her constitution from a child. I am sure he will think she is improved by her residence abroad." So saying she rose to retire for the night; and casting her eyes round the room, she saw lying about, Aveline's gloves, her handkerchief and scarf, which she had thrown aside and forgotten, with the carelessness of youth. These she gathered up and folded together with that indescribable air of tenderness, which, in a mother, sometimes extends itself to the trifles that her child has worn or touched; and then went up stairs to take a last look at Aveline--and to sleep, if she could. CHAPTER II. Mighty power, all powers above! Great unconquerable Love! Thou who liest in dimple sleek, On the tender virgin's cheek: Thee the rich and great obey; Every creature owns thy sway. O'er the wide earth, and o'er the main Extends thy universal reign. SOPHOCLES. Perhaps few things are more curious to those who, as bystanders, contemplate the game of life, than to see how in the stream of time, persons the most divided, and the least likely to be brought into contact, are whirled by those resistless waves nearer and nearer, until at last they meet; or if no collision takes place, still the course of the one, draws into its channel, or modifies in some strange way the course of the other. Margaret little thought as she sat dreaming over her lot at Ashdale, that a sick girl in another county, whom she had never seen, and whose name she had never heard, was to exercise a strange influence over her future fate. Mr. Haveloc was constantly at Ashdale. He went, it is true, backwards and forwards from his own place to that of Mr. Grey, but his visits to his home were wonderfully short, and those at Ashdale longer and longer. His attention, his devotion to Margaret increased daily; she never had occasion to form a wish. He seemed to divine all her thoughts, to anticipate everything that she could by possibility enjoy. And his was especially the kind of character to interest her; his failings were not of a nature to come in her way, and the earnestness of his disposition suited her ideas of the romance of love. She was not likely to mistake a devotion that knew no pause, that entertained no other idea than herself day after day. Then his knowledge, which though rather desultory, was unusual in a man who had not to earn his living--his command of languages, his accomplishments--all things that he never cared to bring forward, but that accident discovered to her by degrees, increased his power over her mind. Men cannot forgive acquirement in a woman, though they will sometimes pardon a sort of natural cleverness; but it is a common story that women are swayed by genius or learning in a man.