"You are surprised to see me, Sinnett." "Well--yes, I am, my lady," returned Sinnett, who did not add that she was shocked also. "I am sorry to see you looking so poorly." "I have come for a few days to say good-bye to you all. You can take my bonnet as well." Sinnett went out with the things. It was found afterwards that the letter, which ought to have announced her arrival, was delayed by some error on the part of the local carrier. It was delivered in the evening. As she sat there facing the light, the ravages disease was making showed themselves all too plainly in her wasted countenance. In frame she was a very skeleton, her hands were painfully thin, her black silk gown hung in folds on her shrunken bosom. Mary Anne put a warm foot-stool under her feet, and wrapped a shawl about her shoulders; Cyril brought a glass of wine, which she drank. "I have to take a great deal of it now, five or six glasses a day, and all kinds of strengthening nourishment," she said. "Thank you, Cyril. Sometimes I lie and think of those poor people whose case is similar to mine, and who cannot get it." How strange the words sounded from her! Thinking for others! Miss Thornycroft, remembering her in the past, listened in a sort of amused incredulity, but a light as of some great gladness shone in the eyes of Cyril. As he left the room to search for his father, who had gone out, Robert Hunter entered it. Seeing a stranger there, an apparent invalid, he was quitting it again hastily when Mary Anne arrested him. "You need not go, Robert; it is my stepmother, Lady Ellis. Mr. Hunter." At the first moment not a trace could he find of the handsome, haughty-faced woman who had beguiled him with her charms in the days gone by. Not a charm was left. She had left off using adjuncts, and her face was almost yellow; its roundness of contour had gone; the cheeks were hollow and wrinkled, the jaws angular. Only by the eyes, as they flashed for a moment into his with a sort of dismayed light, did he recognise her. Bowing coldly, he would have retreated, but she, recovering herself instantly, held out her hand. "No wonder you have forgotten me; I am greatly changed." Mary Anne Thornycroft looked on with astonishment. Had they ever met before? "Yes," said Lady Ellis; "but he was mostly called Mr. Lake then." A flush dyed Robert Hunter's brow. "I threw off the name years ago, when I threw off other things," he said. "What other things did you throw off?" quickly asked Mary Anne. "Oh, many," was the careless answer; "frivolity and idleness, amidst them." Perhaps he remembered that his manner and words, in the view of that wasted face and form, were needlessly ungracious, for his tone changed; he sat down, and said he was sorry to see her looking ill.