While she spoke, the excited girl stood opposite her horror-stricken companion, her head haughtily thrown back, her eyes blazing with defiance, until he really quailed before her. "No wonder you blush," she exclaimed, noticing a deep flush on his cheeks. "You, whom my father raised from poverty: You whom he trusted with all that he most valued on earth. I have often blushed for you when I have heard you speak his name. "I have done more for you than you deserve, for I have never repeated to any one, the precious conversation which I accidentally overheard. What I shall do in the future I cannot say. My only desire now is to leave the city. Before the usual time for resuming my studies, a mutual agreement must be entered into as to my place of residence." To say that the merchant was astonished by his ward's haughty defiance of his wishes, would but feebly express the emotions which surged through his mind as she, a young girl of seventeen summers, expressed her sentiments without reserve concerning him and the plans he had made for her future. He acknowledged to himself that for the time she had conquered; but with an oath, he bound himself to revenge her insult. He doubted her truthfulness when she said she had never repeated the conversation she had overheard, for he judged her conduct by his own, and could scarcely conceive of a sense of honor strong enough to prevent her from publishing such an event to the disadvantage of one she disliked. "Yes," he soliloquized, as she with a contemptuous bow swept from the room, "yes, I have been too squeamish with regard to her property. I will invest those outlying bonds to-morrow." A few hours later, when Frank reached the city, he found his sister quite calm. The catastrophe she had dreaded for months had taken place. The necessity for a change of residence had been made apparent. Roswell's impertinent advances had received a check, and now she could go forth in peace. "Where shall we go?" asked Frank, seriously. "Home to Woodbine Cottage, if the tenants can be persuaded to give up the lease. I would leave to-night were it possible. But as it is not, you must come with me while I bid good-by to my teachers and the few friends I shall leave behind." "So be it. But as I am within a few months of my majority, I must have an interview with Mr. Tracy before I leave." "You can do that while I pack my trunks." A week later found our young friends once more the inmates of Nurse Johnson's cottage. Their kind friend, Mr. Knowles, had undertaken to negotiate with the tenants and endeavor to induce them to relinquish their lease nine months before its legal termination. In the meantime, they had received a hearty welcome to the parsonage whenever they wished to be there. But as Frederic, the youngest son, the Benjamin of the pastor's old age, was now at home, Helen shrank from the invitation to take up her abode there, pleasant as on some accounts, it would have been.