by all that has happened this night."

"No, no—all an ugly dream, as you say, Mattie!" remarked Harriet; "perhaps it is best, and a woman's fame is hard to establish, on her own explanation of such a history as mine. Let it sink. I am verily ashamed of it. My blood will boil at every chance allusion that associates itself with last night. Oh! my poor, dear, truthful Sid, to think of turning away from you and believing in a heartless villain."

"Ah! Sidney!" exclaimed Mattie.

"Whatever happens—whatever the future may bring—that letter, Mattie, must be destroyed. It is a false statement. We must secure it and destroy it. With time before me, and the dark memory shut out, how I will love that faithful heart!"

"Trust the letter to me—trust—oh! the shop, the shop all this while!—and I haven't told you my story."

"Presently then, Mattie. I would go down now."

"Yes, I will go down. I have been very neglectful of business in my joy at seeing you again. It did not seem possible a few hours ago that all would have ended fairly like this. I am so happy—so very happy now, dear Harriet!"

She shook Harriet by both hands, kissed her once more, and even cried a little before she made a hasty dash from the room to the stairs. At the second landing, outside Mr. Hinchford's apartments, she remembered the letter—the evidence of Harriet's past romance in which Sidney Hinchford played no part.

Mattie pictured the future as very bright and glowing after this—the two who had been ever kind to her, and helped so greatly towards her better life, would come together after all, and make the best and truest couple in the world!

Mattie's training—moral training it may be called—was scarcely a perfect one. She had been taught what was honest and truthful; she was far away for ever from the old life; but the fine feelings—the sensitiveness to the minutiæ of goodness—were wanting just then. The means to the end were not particularly to be studied, so that the end was good. Harriet had done no wrong, merely been duped by a specious scamp for awhile; but keep the story dark for the sake of the suspicions it cast on minds inclined to doubt good in anything—and for the sake of general peace, make away with the letter—Sidney Hinchford's property as much as the locket she stole from him when she was eleven years of age.

Harriet Wesden was silent from fear and shame; her nature was a timid one, and shrank back from painful avowals; Mattie did not look at the subject in the best light, and thought of promoting happiness by secrecy, a dangerous experiment, that may tend at any moment to an explosion. Mattie opened the drawing-room door softly and looked in. Mr. Hinchford had not appeared yet, and she entered and went direct to the mantel-piece, on which the letter had lain ever since its arrival. The letter was gone!

"Oh! dear!—oh! dear!—what's to be done now?" cried Mattie, looking from the centre table to the side table on which was Sidney's desk, unlocked. Mattie did not think of appearances when she opened the desk and began turning over its contents with a hasty hand—a suspicious-looking operation, in which she was discovered by Mr. Hinchford, who entered the room suddenly.

"Mattie," he said, sternly, "I should not have thought that you would have been guilty of this meanness."

Mattie, with her bonnet and shawl on, and awry from her past movements, with her face pale and haggard from want of sleep, remained with her hands in the desk, looking hard at the new comer. Her instinct was to tell the truth—there was no harm in it.

"I am looking for the letter which came for Mr. Sidney—I want it back."

"Want it back!—what letter?"

"The letter which has been on the mantel-piece all the week—it was Miss Harriet's—she wishes to have it back, to put something else in it."

"Bless my soul!—very odd," said Mr. Hinchford; "I'll give it to Miss Harriet myself—there's no occasion to rummage my boy's desk about. I don't like it, Mattie—I am extremely displeased."

"I am very sorry," said Mattie, submissively; "I did not think what I was doing. And you will give the letter to Miss Harriet?"

"It's in the breast-pocket of my coat—I'll give it her."

Mattie cowered before the flushed face, and the stern look thereon; this man was a friend of hers, too—one of the rescuers!—whom she would always bear in kind remembrance; she went softly across the room to the door, veering suddenly round to lay her hands upon his arm.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Hinchford," she said; "it was all done without a moment's thought. You, for the first time in your life, will not be angry with me?"

"No, no, no, no," repeated the old gentleman, taken aback by this appeal, and softening at once; "I don't suppose you meant anything wrong, Mattie."

"Thank you."

Mattie went down-stairs in a better frame of mind, and yet ashamed at having been detected in a crooked action by a gentleman who always spoke so much of straightforwardness, and had a son who excelled in that difficult accomplishment. She was vexed at the impulse now—what would any man less generous in his ideas have thought of her?

"Never mind," was Mattie's consolation, "I meant no harm—I meant well. And all will end well now, and everybody be so happy. What a change from the terrible thoughts of only a few hours ago!"

She could think of nothing but Harriet Wesden's safety, and her own minor escapade was of little consequence. Thinking of Harriet again, and rejoicing in the brighter thoughts which the last hours had brought with it, she opened the door at the foot of the stairs and went at once into the shop.

Mr. Wesden was standing behind the counter, waiting upon a customer, as though he had never left Great Suffolk Street, and retiring from business had been only a dream.

CHAPTER XII.

A SHORT WARNING.

Mattie stood in her disordered walking-dress, gazing at the stationer, for whose presence she could not account; Mr. Wesden looked across the counter at her.

"Will you go into the parlour, please?" he said at last.

"In the parlour!—ye—es, sir."

There was something wrong—radically and irretrievably wrong this time; however greatly Mr. Wesden had changed, he had never looked so strangely or spoken so harshly as he did at that time. Even the customer whom he was serving, and who knew Mattie, turned round and glanced also in her direction.

"Robbery!—there—there's been no more robbery!" gasped Mattie, her thoughts darting off at a tangent in the direction of her old trouble.

"You can go into the parlour," he repeated, as harshly as before; "I'll be with you in a minute."

Mattie went into the parlour, took off the bonnet and shawl that, she had so long forgotten, and which must have added to Mr. Wesden's perplexity, and then sat down, with her face towards the shop, to await her master's pleasure—and displeasure! There was trouble in store for her—perhaps for Harriet—Mr. Wesden had discovered a great deal, and she had to bear the first shock of the storm. She could see Mr. Wesden's face from her position; even at that distance it seemed as if the innumerable lines in it had been cut deeper since she had seen it last, and the heavy grey brows shadowed more completely the eyes. He was not his usual self either—the quick glance of the watcher noticed how his hands shook as he served the customer, and that he fumbled with the change in a manner very new and uncharacteristic for him. His habits, or his caution, had even undergone a change; for, as the news-boy came in at the street-door, he told him to go behind the counter and attend to the customers till he returned. Then he entered the parlour, still flushed and trembling, yet so stern, and leaned his two hands on the table till it creaked beneath the pressure which he put upon it.

"Mattie," he said