"Your portlyher!" cried Isabelle. "Why Uncle Lenox was an----"

Instantly a pair of small hands were held like a vice against her lips.Isabelle threw them off angrily.

"You are polite, I must say! Is this a specimen of West Indian manners?"

"You were going to say something I could not hear," said Evadne quietly,"there was nothing else to do."

Isabelle left the room, and, returning, threw a book carelessly upon thetable. "You had better study that," she exclaimed. "It will answer yourquestions better than I can."

"I told you she was a heathen!" she exclaimed, as she rejoined hermother in the sitting-room; "but I did not know that I should have toturn missionary the first night and give her a Bible!"

Upstairs Evadne buried her face among the pillows and the aching heartburst its bonds in one long quivering cry of pain.

"Dearest!"