* * * * *

A week passed, and day after day Evadne sat by her window, speaking no word.  Outdoors the fountain still sparkled in the sunshine and the birds sang, but for her the foundations of life had been shaken to their center.  Her friends tried in vain to break up her unnatural calm.

“If you would only have a good cry, Evadne,” Geoffrey Chittenden said at last, “you would feel better, dear.  That is what all girls do, you know.”

She turned upon him a pair of solemn eyes, out of which the merry sparkle had faded.  “Will crying give me back my father?”

“Why, no, dear.  Of course I didn’t mean that.  But these things are bound to happen to us all, sooner or later, you know.  It is the rule of life.”

“‘The law of progression,’” she said with a dreary laugh.  “I wish the world would stop for good!”

When the clergyman came she met him quietly, and he found himself not a little disconcerted by the steady gaze of the mournful grey eyes.  He was not accustomed to dealing with such wordless grief, and he found his favorite phrases sadly inadequate to the occasion.  There was an awkward pause.

“Dr. Danvers says your father told him some time ago that, in the event of his death, he wished you to make your home with your uncle in America?” he said at length.

Evadne bowed.

“Well, my dear young lady, you will find it in all respects a most desirable home, I feel confident.  Judge Hildreth holds a position of great trust in the church, and is universally esteemed as a Christian gentleman of sterling character.”

The grey eyes were lifted to his face.

“Shall I find Jesus Christ there?”

“Jesus Christ?” The clergyman echoed her words with a start.  “I beg your pardon, my dear.  The Lord sitteth upon his throne in the heavens.  We must approach him reverently, with humble fear.”

“That seems a long way off,” said Evadne in a disappointed tone.  “There must be some mistake.  My father told me to make it the business of my life to find him.”

“Your father, my dear!  Oh, ah, ahem!”

An indignant flash leaped into the grey eyes.  Evadne rose and faced him.  “You must excuse me, sir,” she said quietly.  Then she left the room.

And the tears, which all the kindly sympathy had failed to bring her, at the first breath of censure fell about her like a flood.

CHAPTER III.

Judge Hildreth sat with his family at dinner in the spacious dining-room of one of the finest houses in Marlborough.  He was a handsome man, with a stateliness of manner attributable in part to the deferential homage which Marlborough paid to his opinion in all matters of importance.  His wife, tall and queenly, sat opposite him.  Two daughters and a son completed the family group.  Louis Hildreth had his father’s dark blue eyes and regular features, but there were