“Why, everybody here knows that. The big wooden house is gone, but that heap of stone stands over the old cellar, and _she_ lives like a queen where her father died. The great difference is, she picks roses where he sold leets and carrots; and them green-houses stand just where his pigpens were. Wonderful, isn’t it?” “But you have not told me who the lady is?” “Not told you? Ha! ha! As if everybody didn’t know Mrs. Lambert.” “The lady is married, then?” These words fell heavily, like drops of lead, from the stranger’s white lips, and his hand, which clasped the railing, tightened spasmodically around the iron. “Married! Why that was years and years ago. She went across the seas to some foreign countries after her father died, and came back with a husband and a son.” “Her son?” “Lord a mercy! No! Step-child—a first rate shaver by Mr. Lambert’s first wife; but she don’t seem to know the difference. He’ll get every cent she’s worth, and that’s a heap of money, I tell you. But there she goes down the back walk toward the green-house, you can see her white dress through the bushes.” The stranger grasped the iron spikes with both hands now, and the face, which looked over them, was white as death. “Let me in! Let me pass through!” he exclaimed, looking wildly around for a gate. “Well, I should rather think not; no trespassers ever get in to tread down the madam’s flowers. She wouldn’t allow it. Halloo! what are you about?” The stranger had discovered a gate upon the latch, and opening it, much to the old man’s surprise, passed into the garden. “Stop there! Hold on, I say!” The stranger did not even hear this quivering protest, but walked swiftly across the garden and entered a green-house, that rose in its midst like a mammoth bird-cage of rolling glass, choked up with leaves and blossoms. Beneath an acacia-tree, covered with soft, yellow blossoms, stood a lady, with her white arm uplifted, gathering a spray of the delicate plant, which she was about to group with a quantity of moss-roses and heliotrope, which she had plucked in the open air. She dropped her hand in amazement as a strange man entered the green-house, and the branch she had half broken rustled slowly back to its place. “Elizabeth!” The lady started. A cry that rose to her lips as her name was uttered, broke into something like a sob, and she seemed about to escape. “Elizabeth!” She turned now, trembling, white, shrinking with dread, and looked into the man’s face. “You—you——” Her blanched lips could utter no more, she seized the acacia by its stem, and the trembling of her arm shook down the blossoms like rain upon her bowed head. CHAPTER X. DAWNING PROSPERITY.