"A romantic fancy--I have been romantic from a child. It is all passed away now--remember that when he----" "When he--_what_?" "Asks you to be his wife, to become his natural protector; you alone can save him now from desolation--never my task--never now my wish. Good-bye." She swept away coldly and proudly, leaving the amazed Mattie watching her departure. What did she mean?--what had Sidney said to her that she should go away like that, distrusting her and the motives which had brought her there--she, of all women in the world! Mattie went back to Sidney's room excited and trembling. Close to his side before she startled him by her voice. "Mr. Sidney, long ago you were proud of being straightforward in your speech--of telling the plain truth, without prevarication." "Time has not changed me, I hope, Mattie." "What have you said to Harriet Wesden?" "To whom!" The horror on his face expressed the facts of the case at once, before the next words escaped him. "It was--Harriet Wesden then!" "Yes." "And she came in to see me, and assumed your character, Mattie?" he said; "why did you let her in?" "I don't know," murmured Mattie; "she was anxious about you, and she had come hither to make inquiries without intruding upon you, until I--I advised her to come." "For what reason?" he asked in a low tone. "I thought that you two might become better friends again, and----" "Ah! no more of that," he interrupted; "that was like my good sister Mattie, striving for everybody's happiness, except her own, perhaps. Mattie, you talk as if I had my sight, and were strong enough to win my way in life yet. You so quick of perception, and with such a knowledge of the world--you!" he reiterated. "Misfortune will never turn Harriet Wesden away from any one whom she has loved--it would not stand in the way of any true woman. And oh! sir, if I may speak of her once again--just this once--" "You may not," was his fierce outcry; "Mattie, I ask you not, in mercy to me!" "Why?" persisted Mattie. "I don't know--let me be in peace." It was his old sullenness--his old gloom. Back from the past, into which Mattie's efforts had driven it, stole forth that morbid despondency which had kept him weak and hopeless. The remainder of that day the old enemy was too strong for any effort of Sidney's strange companion, and Mattie felt disheartened by her ill success. CHAPTER IV. A NEW DECISION. Sidney Hinchford rose the next morning in better spirits, and Mattie in worse. Half the night in his own room Sidney had reflected on his vexatious sullenness of the preceding day, and on the effect it most have had on Mattie; half the night, Mattie in her room had pondered on the strangeness of the incidents of the last four-and-twenty hours--on that new demeanour of Harriet Wesden, which implied so much, and yet explained so little.