"Are you still pleased with your nurse, my darling?" inquired her mother. "Oh, yes, mamma. Mary is the kindest nurse I ever had," answered Ruby, lifting her heavy eyes tenderly to Golden's sweet face. "I am very glad to hear it," said her mother. "Does your head ache too bad for you to take your morning drive with me, dear?" "Oh, no, I think it will be better when I get out in the air," said Ruby, with a brightening face. "Shall we take my nurse with us?" "Not this morning, I think, as I shall drive the pony-phaeton, and there is only room for two." "Will not papa go then?" said the child, disappointed. "No; he has a business engagement, and cannot accompany us. You see we are going to the seaside next week, and he has a great many things to see to first," Mrs. Desmond answered, with the child's disappointment reflected on her own beautiful face. She loved her husband with the devotion of a strong, intense nature, and begrudged every moment he spent away from her side. Her jealousy was as strong as her love, and Mr. Desmond was the type of man best calculated to keep this baleful passion in the fullest play. He had been noted as a male flirt before he married Edith Chesleigh, and his conduct since their union had not been of a sort to strengthen his wife's faith in his fidelity. Beautiful as she was herself, she soon found that he was by no means blind to the charms of other women. She turned to the nurse with a suppressed sigh, and said, quietly: "You may dress Ruby now in a white hat and dress, and cardinal sash, while I am getting ready." Then she kissed Ruby and went to her dressing-room. Golden hastened to follow her instructions. "We shall go to the seaside next week and stay two months. Shall you like that, Mary?" asked the child, while Golden was brushing her dark curls over her fingers. "I dare say I shall like it, if you do," replied the girl. "Oh, we will have a splendid time. We will go bathing in the sea in the mornings, and afterward we will stroll on the sands, and gather beautiful, rosy shells. At night they have balls and dancing. Sometimes mamma lets me stay up awhile to see them dance. Oh, it is grand fun! I wish I was a grown lady," cried the child, flapping her hands. Golden listened in silence, and the strange loneliness and quietude of the life in which she had been reared, struck her more and more by its contrast with the bright, bustling world outside and beyond Glenalvan Hall. When little Ruby had gone away for her drive with her mother, she sat down in the quiet nursery and resigned herself to thought. Her thought went back to the gray, old hall in the sunny south, and the kind, old man she had deserted. She wondered if he would forgive her, and pray for her that she might find her mother.