started when the child Phyllie had pronounced it, and a crimson tide of colour rushed over her pale face. She loosened the clinging arms of the children, and, taking a step towards the Professor, stood with strained eyes staring at him.
"The professor rose suddenly."
"Hugh!" she cried.
Bluntly and confusedly he stammered: "But the child said you were dead!"
The immobility of his face was all broken up with the strength of the conflicting emotions that possessed him, his grey eyes glowed under the prominent brows, and his strong hands trembled. Phyllis was scarcely less moved herself, but, woman-like, seeing his excessive and almost over-mastering agitation, she came to the rescue by controlling herself into calmness of voice and manner.
"The children's mother is dead," she said, gently.
"They are not your children?" said the Professor, passing a hand over his brow, as if to sweep away the mist of bewilderment that obscured his understanding.
"They are my brother's children," said Phyllis Wynne. "He has just been appointed minister at a Presbyterian church at C———." She named a large town some miles distant. "I have taken care of the children since their mother died a few months ago, and we have come here for a holiday."
"And you—you are widowed, then?" blundered on the Professor.
Phyllis Wynne looked at him strangely.
"I have never been married," she said, simply, and the crimson colour again dyed her delicate face.
The Professor stared at her a moment in horrified amazement, scarcely able to seize the import of her words. Then he broke out in a passionate way, his voice loud and stern:—
"Then what fiend sent me that false notice of your marriage—your marriage with Colonel Llewellyn?"
"Oh, Hugh! Hugh!" cried Phyllis Wynne swiftly, her voice sharp with pain. Through her quick woman's mind there had flashed the explanation of all that had been so incomprehensible, the realization of all that Hugh as well as she herself had suffered, and with it a contrasting vision of what might have been. "Oh, Hugh! What an awful mistake! My cousin of the same name, Phyllis Wynne, married Colonel Llewellyn!"
"My God!" cried the Professor, "what a fool I was! what a fool!"
A dead silence fell between them. No detailed explanation was necessary just then. Each understood that either through the mistake of some officious meddler, or through the deliberate villainy of some rival of Hugh Morgan's, they had been kept apart through the best years of life, each embittered by the thought of the other's faithlessness. They stood side by side, looking gravely out at the gleaming sea. Their hearts were beating with the same momentous thought, but neither yet dared to give expression to it. The children, gathering their yellow poppies and twining them about their hamper, looked up curiously now and again at their aunt and their new friend, and wondered why their faces were so serious and yet so excited, and why, after talking so earnestly, they had now fallen into complete silence.
The silence could not long be maintained unbroken. It grew too pregnant with strong, struggling emotion. The Professor suddenly turned to the woman by his side.
"Have we met again too late, Phyllis?" he cried. "Is it too late?"
As the question passed his lips, his face grew very white, and his grey eyes filled with an intense and painful eagerness. Phyllis kept him in no suspense. Her answer came at once, in a broken cry of love.
"Oh, Hugh! it is not too late!—it could never have been too late!" And, her blue
