CHAPTER XI.
"YOU ARE DISINHERITED--EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS MINE." Faynie had indeed departed from that humble home as she had entered it, in the dark, dim silence of the bitter-cold night.
She made her way as best she could to the station which, fortunately enough, was not far distant.

The station master was old and anxious to get home, and therefore paid little heed to the little dark-robed figure who bought a ticket to New York, and soon after crept silently aboard of the train which steamed into the little depot of the hamlet, almost buried in the snowdrifts across the hills.
Weak and faint from her recent illness, Faynie, the beautiful, petted little heiress of a short time before, huddled into a corner of the seat by the door, and drawing her veil carefully over her face, wept silently and unheeded as the midnight express bore her along to her destination.
She was going home to Beechwood; going back to the home she had left in such high spirits to join the lover who was to be all in all to her forever more; the lover who was to shield her henceforth and forever from the world's storms, and was to be all devotion to her and love her fondly until death did them part.

And this had been the end of it.

Her high hopes lay in ruins around her.

Her idol had been formed of commonest clay, and lay crumbled in a thousand fragments at her feet.
Surely, no young girl's love dream ever had such a sad awakening, and was so cruelly dispelled.
She would go home to her haughty old father, tell him all, then lie down at his feet and die.