“Yes,” he said, in answer to their inquiring looks, “we knew and loved each other years ago in Jefferson, where I first set up business. She was an orphan, and the sweetest creature I ever saw, but very much under the influence of an older sister--a proud, selfish, scheming, domineering woman. She, I have always thought it was, who came between my love and me. I meant to speak before I left, and tried to do so, but she contrived to foil every attempt. Then I wrote, and the answer was, I have little doubt, dictated or forged by her.” “She rejected you?” Mrs. Heywood’s tone was both inquiring and indignant. “Yes, mother; but don’t condemn her unheard,” he said, with a smile of filial affection. “That in so doing she did not follow the dictates of her own heart I now know beyond a question.” “I don’t want to be uncharitable, or to wound you, Rolfe,” returned his mother, flushing slightly, “but that any woman should reject the man she loves and marry another seems to me both weak and wicked.” “Wait, my dear, till you have heard her story,” said the old gentleman. “We don’t know how she may have been deceived and betrayed.” A few days later Rolfe came to his mother with an explanation which even in her eyes exculpated Ethel. “Ah, well, poor thing! she’s had a hard time of it,” said the old lady, wiping away a tear. “And I hope, Rolfe, if she falls into your hands you’ll try to make it up to her.” “I shall indeed,” he said, with a peculiar and very happy smile. “Come, mother, come to her room with me. The minister is there, my father and Ada too, and Ethel and I are now to be made one for life.” “Rolfe!” she cried in astonishment. “Yes, mother; I cannot let her feel herself alone in the wide world any longer, and I must have the right to nurse her back to health. You will not withhold your consent, mother dear?” “No,” she said, with a half-bewildered look as she accepted the support of his offered arm, “not if it is to make you and that poor young thing happy; but it is very sudden.” CHAPTER IV. A STRANGE REVELATION. “The web of our life is of a mingled Yarn, good and all together.”--SHAKESPEARE. For a few days the little Ethel was quite inconsolable, crying sadly for “Mamma;” but the new parents were very tender, patient, and affectionate, and the old love gradually faded from the baby memory, till at length it was utterly forgotten in the new. So also was the name her true mother had given her, Mrs. Kemper changing it to Florence, which she liked better. Anxious that the child should believe herself their own by birth, the Kempers considered it fortunate that it was while journeying to a new home in the West, among strangers, in the little town of Cranley, that they obtained possession of her. They breathed no hint of the little one’s history, and none of their new acquaintances had the least suspicion of the truth, as indeed how should they when to both parents “our little Floy” was evidently as the apple of the eye?