"No, indeed! I paid him over the munificent sum you intrusted to me for him. He feels--well, I may say painfully grateful, and is confident that he must some time repay you, with interest and compound interest."

"Yes, my boy will certainly repay me, but not in the way he thinks,"

observed Victor, gravely.

"After a week's visiting with his sister at Blue Cliffs, he will go up to Richmond and select a site for his office and purchase his law library, though I think he will have to go to Philadelphia to do that."

"Yes, I suppose he will," admitted Hartman.

"What are your own plans about yourself, Victor, if I may be allowed to ask?" inquired the minister.

"Well, I haven't any. I came on here to see my boy and girl, and settle them in life as well as I can. I shall stay till I do that anyway. After that I don't know what I shall do. I do not care about going back to California. My business there is in the hands of a capable and trustworthy agent. And somehow I like the old mother State; and now that you lead me to think about it, perhaps I shall spend the rest of my life here; but, as I said before, I don't know."

"By the way, dear Victor, you spoke to me with much simple frankness of my most private personal affairs. May I take the same liberty with you?"

inquired Mr. Lyle, very seriously.

"Why, of course you may, if you call it a liberty, which I don't, you know!" answered Victor, with a smile.

"Then, my dear Hartman, how about Miss Electra? I was not so absorbed in my own interests as not to have an eye to yours."

"Ah, Miss Electra! Well, parson, she _was_ my little old acquaintance of Rat Alley, when I flourished in that fragrant neighborhood as Galley Vick."

"No!" exclaimed Mr. Lyle, opening his eyes wide with astonishment.

"Yes," quietly answered Victor Hartman. "And it is a wonder that you, who know the family so well, do not know this episode in its history."

"How was I to know, my friend, when no one ever told me? I suppose that few or none but the family know anything about it."

"I suppose you are right," said Victor. "Well, you see, she recognized me, as surely as I did her, at first sight. We had an explanation as we walked out to the University that day."

"But how came the granddaughter of Dr. Beresford Jones ever to have had such a miserable childhood?"

"Well, you see, there was a disobedient daughter, a runaway marriage, a profligate husband, and the consequences--poverty, dest.i.tution, early death, and an orphan child left among beggars and thieves! Her grandfather found her at last and took her under his guardianship. That is the whole story in brief."

"Well, well, well!" mused Mr. Lyle, with his head on his breast; then, raising it, he went back to the previous question: "But what about Miss Electra?"

"I have just told you about her," replied Victor.

"Oh, yes, I know! You have told me something about her, but you haven't told me all. Take me into your confidence, Victor."

"What do you mean?" inquired Hartman, in some embarra.s.sment.

"Why, that you and your little old acquaintance seem to be very fond of each other."

Victor laughed in an embarra.s.sed manner, and then said: "Do you know that when we were in Rat Alley, and she was a tiny child and I was a lad, there was a promise of marriage between us?"

"That was funny too! Well, what about it?"

"Nothing. Only, if I dared, I would, some day, remind her of it."

"Do, Victor! Believe me, she will not affect to have forgotten it," said Mr. Lyle, earnestly.

"Ah, but when I think of all I have pa.s.sed through I dare not ask a beautiful and happy girl to unite her bright life with my blackened one!

I dare not," said Hartman, very sadly.

"Nonsense, Victor! You are morbid on that subject. Yours is a n.o.bly redeemed life," said Mr. Lyle, solemnly.

"But--my past!" sighed Victor.

"She had a dark past too poor child! But no more of that. In both your cases

"'Let the dead past bury its dead!

Live--live in the living present, Heart within and G.o.d o'erhead!'

And now it is time to retire, dear Victor. We keep early hours here,"

said Mr. Lyle, as he reached down the Bible from its shelf, preparatory to commencing evening service.

Then they read the Word together, and offered up their prayers and thanksgivings together, and retired, strengthened.

This week, to which Alden Lytton's holiday visit to Blue Cliffs was limited, was pa.s.sed by the young people in a succession of innocent entertainments.

First there was a garden-party and dance at Blue Cliff Hall, at which all the young friends and acquaintances of Miss Cavendish a.s.sisted, which the Rev. Dr. Jones and the Rev. Mr. Lyle endorsed by their presence, and in which even Victor Hartman forgot, for the time being, his own dark antecedents.

Next Mr. Lyle himself opened his bachelor heart and bachelor home to the young folks by giving them a tea-party, which delighted the hearts of Aunt Nancy and Uncle Ned, who both declared that this looked something _like_ life.

But the third and greatest event of the week took place on Friday evening, when Dr. Beresford Jones gave a great house-warming party, on the occasion of his carrying home his granddaughter and sole heiress, Electra Coroni.

Not only all our own young friends, including the reverend clergy and the California miner, but all the neighborhood and all the county were there.

And they kept up the festivities all day and well into the night.

Emma Cavendish and Laura Lytton remained with Electra for a few days only, for Alden Lytton was to leave the neighborhood for Richmond on the Monday morning following the party at Beresford Manors.

And during all this time no word was heard of Mary Grey.

That baleful woman had heard all that had pa.s.sed at Charlottesville and at Wendover, and her vain and jealous spirit was filled with such mortification and rage that she was now hiding herself and deeply plotting the ruin of those who had been her best friends and benefactors.

CHAPTER XXII.

MORE MANEUVERS OF MRS. GREY.

She, under fair pretense of saintly ends, And well-placed words of sweetest courtesy Baited with reason, not unplausible, Glides into the easy hearts of men, And draws them into snares.

--MILTON'S _Comus_.

When Mary Grey reached Richmond she went first to a quiet family hotel, where she engaged a room for a few days.