‘But don’t let success make you hard, Walter,’ she said gently.  ’Remember how we used to plan what we should do for the poor if we were rich.’

‘Your opportunity is here, then,’ he said sharply; ’mine is only to come.’

The tone, more than the words, wounded her afresh.  Oh, this was not the Walter of old!  She rose from the old box a trifle wearily, and looked round her with slightly saddened air.

‘Have you heard anything of your sister?’ she asked him.

‘No, nothing.’

‘She has never written to any one?’

’No.  I think she has gone to London to join a theatre.  The girl who was her chum thinks so too.’

‘Are your father and mother well?’

’As well as they deserve to be.  They wanted to come here and live.  Had they been decent and respectable, it wouldn’t have been a bad arrangement.  As they are, I simply wouldn’t have it; I’d never get on.  Of course they cast my pride in my teeth, but God knows I have little enough to be proud of.’

His mood cast its dark spell over the girl’s sensitive heart, and she turned to go.

‘It is all so different,’ she said in a low voice, ’but the difference is not in me.  Shall we never meet now, Walter?’

’It will be better not.  If I ever succeed, and I have sworn to do it, we may then meet on more equal ground,’ he said steadily, and not a sign of the unutterable longing in his heart betrayed itself in his set face.  His pride was as cruel as the grave.

‘Till then it is good-bye, then, I suppose?’ she said quietly.

‘Yes, till then; the day will come, or I shall know the reason why.’

‘But it may be too late then, Walter, for us both.’

With these words, destined to ring their warning changes in his ears for many days, she left him, without touch of the hand or other farewell.

‘Well, dear,’ said Clara, with a slightly quizzical smile, ’has it made you happier to revive the ghosts of the past?’

‘No; you were right, and I wrong,’ said Gladys, as she sank into the cushioned seat.  ‘It was a great mistake.’

But even Clara did not know how dark was the shadow which had settled down on the girl’s gentle soul.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SWEETS OF LIFE.

From that day a change was observed in Gladys Graham.  It was as if she had suddenly awakened from a dream, to find herself surrounded by the realities of life.  Her listlessness vanished, her pensive moods became things of the past.  None could be more interested in every plan and project, however small, in which the Fordyce household were concerned.  She became lively, merry, energetic; it seemed impossible for her to be still.

‘Now, what do you suppose is the matter with Gladys, Clara?’ said Mina, the morning of the day they were to leave town.  ’You who pretend to be a philosopher and a reader of character ought to be able to solve that mystery.’