Her face was radiant, and Rufus said with slight embarrassment, "I can hardly believe I am speaking to the identical little Greta, and yet you are strangely the same in voice and manner. I often wondered if I should ever meet my child-friend again; how long ago it seems!" There was much to ask and explain. Greta's story was simply told. "At my mother's death her relations came forward at once. She had offended them by marrying my father, who was a struggling country doctor; and after his death she was too proud to go to them for help. Rebecca wrote to my aunt, Lady Chatterton, the day after my mother was taken from us; and she responded as soon as she was able, for she was abroad at the time. Rebecca and I went to her town house, and from there I was sent to a boarding-school. I used to spend my holidays alternately with Lady Chatterton and Mrs. Warren, with whom I am staying now. But my home is now supposed to be with Lady Chatterton." "Your vocation in life is not that to which you used to look forward," said Rufus, with a smile. "I sometimes wish it were," was the quiet response. "I have a longing to be up and doing. And yet I suppose we are never placed in any sphere where we cannot be a help to some one." "The maxims of the redoubtable Becca are still with you!" Greta's face was full of grave sweetness as she answered, "Rebecca took most of her maxims from the oldest book in the world, and taught me to do the same." "And little Greta passed the teaching on to a thoughtless young man," Rufus said, an earnest, far-away look coming into his eyes. "I have to thank that little child for putting before me higher aims and motives than those of merely accumulating wealth and making a position in the world for myself." There was silence for a moment, then Rufus said in a lighter tone, "And now let me tell you my story. You remember my circumstances? I shall never forget the interest you took as a tiny child in the fate of the boy who left home because he could not carry out his mother's wishes." "I remember," said Greta, a soft color coming into her cheeks, "I used at that time to think of him as some unknown hero, and it was only long afterward that I associated him with yourself. Your circumstances, like mine, have surely changed?" "Yes; I only stayed a couple of years at that bank, and then I went abroad as manager of a foreign branch. I got acquainted at Cairo with an eccentric old bachelor, Sir Peter Vivian, and to my amazement last year, when he died, I found he had made me his heir, and left me his property down here." "And your mother?" questioned Greta, with some hesitation. Rufus's face grew dark and stern as he said, shortly— "I have not seen her for sixteen years. She has been travelling abroad." "Does she know of your good fortune?" "Yes; she wrote to congratulate me, and gave me an invitation forthwith to go and see her." "And you did not do so?"