"Ads" I said at last, "this is not entirely his own doing. It is Lister Wilmot's." "No, no!" she said, moaning and rocking herself backwards and forwards; "you are mistaken. He is in great distress about it. This letter was inclosed to him last night; he knew nothing of it." "Ada, I feel convinced that he did and that he does know. Child, let me speak to you once more as your guardian and your dead fathers friend. Take your mind back to that morning before the inquest, and to a conversation which passed between us then. You remember that Wilmot had been at your house before me, and repeated something which poor old Thorneley said the evening of his death--something about you and me. You called it then, Ada, 'worse than foolishness;' so I will call it now. Do you remember?' "I do," she said faintly, the color rising to her cheeks. "That has been dragged out several times since, privately and publicly--always by Wilmot himself or at his instigation. Has Hugh never spoken about it with you?" "Yes," she answered in the same low tones. "He spoke of it once, very lately. I was trying to persuade him to be friends with you. It was the only time he ever said an unkind word to me; but he was angry then." A sob broke from her at the remembrance. "I don't wish to distress you; but just think if those thoughts and feelings were put into his mind and harped upon, traded with by one professing himself to be so staunch a friend just now,--can we wonder at the results?" She looked at me as if she hardly understood. "I mean," I said, speaking as calmly as I could, "that he was led to believe it true. He thought I was attached to you, and desirous of winning you from him." She was silent for some moments. "What am I to do?" she said at last. And I too was silent. One thing presented itself to my mind, if only I had the heart to speak it out, if only the courage. Suddenly she looked up with a happy light in her eyes and almost a smile on her lips. She leaned forward with breathless earnestness. I felt instinctively she had thought on the same thing, and that she had resolved to act upon it. "I can go after him. That is the right thing for me to do, is it not, guardian?" For a moment my heart stood still. I knew she would go. "Can you bear the voyage, Ada?" "I could bear anything,--all for his sake." And I felt that her answer was but a faint shadowing of the great truth that filled her heart. "Then go," I said; "and may God's blessing go with you!" I rose, turned my face towards the window, and looked out into the desolate square with its leafless trees, its snow-covered walks; looked out into the dull blank future, into the cheerlessness of coming years.