Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/174

164 vowed in his heart he should not forget the girl he loved.

In his nineteenth year a lady came to visit his mother, bringing her daughter with her. He was struck with admiration for the girl's fair face, and his heart went out of him in its first real love. His mother noticed this, and to humiliate him brought the lodge girl back, and set her as servant in the house. The trick was lost upon the lad. He passed the girl upon the stairs, and did not know her. The poor thing had never thought the heir to the Osborne estates had ever meant anything by his passionate promises, and had long ago turned her eyes upon another man; so she did her work with cheerfulness, and never said anything to remind him that he had made her promise to wait till he was of an age to marry.

the eve of her son's twenty-first birthday Lady Osborne sat alone in her boudoir. Her heart, feeding on its own bitterness for years, had grown more cruel towards the boy every