If she really loved him, would she coquet with him like this--would she so pretend?
All in a second, as he stands looking at her, the whole of the past year comes back to him.

A strange year, fraught with gladness and deep pain--with fears and joys intense! What had it all meant?
If anything, it had meant devotion to her--to his cousin, who, widowed, all but penniless, had been flung by the adverse winds of Fate into his home.
She was the only daughter of Lady Rylton's only brother, and the latter had taken her in, and in a measure adopted her.

It was a strange step for her to take--for one so little led by kindly impulses, or rather for one who had so few kindly impulses to be led by; but everyone has a soft spot somewhere in his heart, and Lady Rylton had loved her brother, good-for-nothing as he was.

There might have been a touch of remorse, too, in her charity; she had made Marian's marriage! Grudgingly, coldly, she opened her son's doors to her niece, but still she opened them.

She was quite at liberty to do this, as Maurice was seldom at home, and gave her always _carte blanche_ to do as she would with all that belonged to him.