AVING completed his breakfast, Mr. Percy Darley seated himself in a n easy-chair, facing the cheerful grate-fire of ruddy anthracite, placed his toes upon the fender, and relapsed into a thoughtful contemplation of Leonard's letter.

“You had best come, my dear boy,” said the letter. “It is a sleepy little town—one of those idyllic Acadian places of which you used to rave when you were tired of the city and fretful at her ways. We can smoke our pipes and chat over the old days, before a fire in my big, old-fashioned grate. There is a noble stretch of clear ice here now. Our little river is frozen over, solid and safe, and the darkest prospects do not foreshadow another fall of snow for a fortnight. The sleighing is superb; and, as Madeline Bridges says, 'the nights are splendid.' Pack up your traps and come.”

The invitation was an alluring one, thought Darley. His head ached, and his heart was sick of the everlasting round of parties and calls and suppers. What a vision of beatific rest that idea of a chat over old times! Ah, dear old times of childhood and youth, when our tears are as ephemeral as our spendthrift dimes!

There seemed to be only one rational preclusion—to wit, Miss Charteris. Not that he thought Miss Charteris would personally object to his absence, but, rather, that he had an objection to leaving Miss Charteris. Miss Charteris was an heiress, and a handsome woman; to be brief, Miss Charteris being rich, and our friend Darley having the millstone of debt about his neck, he had determined, if possible, to wed her. If he went away, however, at this period of his acquaintance, when the heiress and he were becoming fast friends, some one else would doubtless step into the easy shoes of attention.

So Darley went down into the city and telegraphed his friend Leonard that he would be in Dutton on the evening train. He thought he should like to see Miss Charteris, however, before going. He walked back slowly along a particularly favorite drive of hers, and presently met this young lady with her stylish little turn-out, looking very radiant and happy on this bright winter morning.

There was some one with her—a fact Darley noticed with no great feeling of pleasure. It was not a strange thing; but, following the course of things as they had been for the past few weeks, it should have been Darley himself. This morning it was a sallow, dark young man whom Darley did not remember having seen before.

Darley explained that he was about to leave town for a few weeks, as soon as Miss Charteris had drawn up alongside the pavement to wish him goodmorning. Then she introduced him to her companion. “A very old friend—Mr. Severance—just arrived from Australia.”

“Dear old Dutton!” said Miss Charteris, looking reminiscent. “You must not break any trusting hearts down there, Mr. Darley; for the Dutton maids are not only lovely, but proverbially trusting.”

“You know Dutton, then?” Darley answered, surprised.

“Oh, yes! I have a very dear aunt in Dutton—oh, but you will see! I spent some of my happiest days there. So did you, I think, Lawrence.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Severance reflectively, “days almost as happy as the present day. Don't you think, Mr. Darley, that a man's best years cluster round the age of ten?”

Darley could not help agreeing to this. All men, provided their youth has been happy, think so. Darley said good-by, and walked on.

Who was this fellow Severance? She called him Lawrence—Lawrence, by Jove! There was something in it—rather old schoolmates, too, they had been, and what might they not be now? It was more pique than disappointment which caused Darley to wish momentarily that he was not scheduled for Dutton. However, he must stand the hazard of the die.

His things were soon packed; he also supplied himself with a box of the cigars Leonard and he used to love in “the days that are no more,” and a copy of “Outing.” And ten hours later the train, with a jovial roar, ran into the little town, where the lights gleamed cozily against the snowy background, and the sleigh-bells seemed to bid him a merry, musical welcome.

A short, erect, trimly built man with a finely chiseled face and a brown skin that seemed to breathe of pine woods and great wide, sunlit rivers grasped Darley's hand as he stepped to the platform.

“Well, old man!” exclaimed the brown man, cheerily. “Awfully glad you've come! Come this way! Here we are, Joseph! Step in!”

“By Jove! it is wintry here, isn't it?” said Darley, as he slid under the buffalo robes. “What a peerless night!”

After supper the two men made themselves thoroughly comfortable in great leather chairs before Leonard's promised fire, and smoked and chatted.

“You look just the same, old boy,” said Leonard, scanning Darley carefully. “But the hair is a little thin in front there, and I think I see the growing spot of baldness, as Ike Marvel has it. Did you ever read that great book of his, 'A Bachelor's Reveries?' No? Well, you should. I find it sweetest company. Yes, you are the same old sobersides—a great deal deeper than you look, as the little boy said when he fell into the well. And not married yet, eh?”

“Who, the little boy?”

“No; you, you rogue! I should have thought you would have gone off long ago.”

“Why?”

“A hard question to answer. Are we not always in a condition of mild wonder that our friends have not gone over to the married ranks, when we ourselves have not? However, from floating gossip—that tongue's flotsam—I have heard that you meditate going over.”

“Eh?” said Darley, pricking up his ears.

“Why,” answered Leonard, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “Beau Brummel cannot pay court to a beauty without the world knowing it! I, even I, have heard of Miss Bella Charteris. She is not the sort of girl, if I may make so bold, that I would have imagined you pinning yourself to. I should have thought some quiet, sober, angelic little woman like——”

“Like who?”

“Well, I was going to say like her sister,” said Leonard softly, bending his head over his pipe as he slowly refilled it. “But you do not know her sister, I think.”

“Why, I did not even know Miss Charteris had a sister!” exclaimed Dar-ley in amazement.

“No? Why, Miss Florence Charteris lives here—in Dutton!”

“Miss Charteris mentioned an aunt, and hinted at some one else whom she said I would see, now that I think of it.”

“Irony, I suppose,” said Leonard quietly, smiling a queer little smile. “Yes, Miss Charteris the second lives in Dutton: a quaint, gray little life, good, patient, and God-like. She is the sweet angel of Dutton. But tell me, Percy, are you in love with your Miss Charteris?”

“I am afraid she is not my Miss Charteris,” said Darley, smiling. “And to be candid with you, Jack, I am not in love with her—for which, perhaps, I should be thankful. However, if Miss Charteris does accept me, which I think is highly improbable, I shall marry her for money.”

Leonard shook his head. “I thought that was the way the wind lay,” he said sagaciously. “Don't do it,” he added tersely, after a pause. “Take an old fool's advice—don't do it. I think you would only live to regret having sold yourself into bondage. That is what it would amount to in your case. You are not built upon rough enough lines, I know, not to care at having your poverty sneered at and constantly thrown in your face. It is a puzzle to me how any man with any sense of independence and honor can sell himself, as some men do; and it is beyond my understanding how you, with your fine feelings and high ideal of manhood, ever thought of such a thing.”

This was certainly rubbing it in, Dar-ley thought. But, then, Leonard was such an exceptionally odd fellow, with his one-man-in-a-million code of chivalry and his ethical eccentricities. Still, Darley shrunk at the castigation, because he knew that the feelings that prompted it were sincere.

“But I am terribly in debt, Jack,” he said, almost deprecatingly. “What is there left for me to do?”

“What is there left? The opportunity to fight it out!” retorted Leonard. “Retrench. In a year, or two at most, unless you are hopelessly insolvent, if you live without the profitless pleasures that have brought you to this pass, you can come out triumphantly independent.”

Darley shook his head. “I am afraid I could not stand the strain, Jack,” he answered, almost sadly. “A fellow of your caliber might. How is it, by the way, that you yourself are still in single harness?”

Leonard was silent, gazing in the coals with almost a melancholy air.

“Perhaps I should not say so,” he said at last, “yet you have been so frank with me; but I do not like the subject when applied to myself. However, there is but one answer, which is embodied in that one word that hangs like a pall before the eyes of the young literary aspirant—refused. I shall always be single, Darley. Always the same old solitary sixpence, with my rods and guns and dogs and books. Not bad companions, all of them, when used well—faithful, too. Eh, Rosy?”

The beautiful hound addressed raised her head and looked pathetically at her master, rubbing her nose in a sympathetic way against his leg.

Darley felt deeply interested. “What was the trouble, old fellow?” he ventured.

“The whole story is contained in that one word—refused. I never cared for but one woman; and she did not care for me—at least, not enough to marry. Which was, after all, the most natural thing in the world, I suppose. I could not blame her, could I, since I would only marry for love myself? It is not much of a story, is it?”

“On the contrary, I think there is a great deal in it!” answered Darley, warmly. “I think I see that you loved this woman as only men with hearts like yours can love—once and for all.”

“Loved her? My love has no past participle, Darley! I shall always love her! I shall always think her the sweetest woman in the world, and the best! There is no other like her—God bless her! But you are sleepy, old fellow; and even Rosy is yawning and thinks it is time all decent people went to bed. Let us have one of the old-time horns, one of those old camp-fire nips—and then to bed. To-morrow you shall see our little town. By the way, did you bring your skates?”

“Skates! I haven't seen one for five years.”

“Never mind. I have a dozen pairs, and I dare say we can fit you. Do you curl? No? Well, you shall learn. We have the finest rink within a hundred miles. Here's your room, old fellow! Good-night, and rosy dreams and slumbers bright, as Sir Walter says.”

The days passed happily for Darley. The ice was perfect; and though he had not skated for years, his old power over the art came swiftly back. The river was one glaring, narrow, indefinite sheet of incomparable ice. Then there was the curling-rink, of which Leonard was an ardent devotee. It is a quiet, satisfying sport, this “roaring” game, and has peculiar charms for the man who has turned forty. The snow-bird shooting was good, too, out in the broad white fields beyond the town. And one glittering night the pair drove out into the country, and went on a hunt after some depredatory foxes with some farmers. They did not get the foxes; but they had a jolly supper at the farm-house, and an eight-hand reel in the kitchen, which Darley thoroughly enjoyed—more, he affirmed to his black-eyed partner, than any ball in the city he had ever attended.

One morning, Leonard having some business to detain him, Darley went off alone for the customary spin down the river. Skating out of the town and away past the white fields and the farmhouses, he presently espied a small feminine figure ahead of him, gliding quietly along. Suddenly the figure tripped and fell. One skate had come off and flew out to the center of the ice.

Darley sped to the rescue. The little figure in gray made a futile attempt to rise.

“Are you hurt?” exclaimed the rescuer as he wheeled to a short stop.

The lady looked up, and Darley saw the likeness in an instant. It was the other Miss Charteris—not at all like his acquaintance of the city. A rather pale, patient little face, with quiet gray eyes set far apart; a plain face, Darley said to himself. But on second thought he decided that it was not.

“I am afraid I have hurt my ankle,” said this little woman in answer to Darley's inquiry. “I tried to stand up, but I got a twinge that told me something was wrong.”

“Let me help you. Which foot is it?”

“This one,” indicating the foot minus the skate.

Darley lifted her up. “Now you keep the injured member off the ice,” he said, “and I will skate you to shore.”

“It was all my fault,” said the patient, as Darley knelt down and removed the remaining skate. “I would put on these old-fashioned things just because the blades are splendid.”

Darley secured the refractory skate and removed his own. Then he asked how the ankle felt.

Miss Charteris attempted to stand upon both feet, but sat down upon the bank instantly.

“It does hurt,” she said, as if unwilling to admit the painful fact. She looked at Darley almost appealingly, then about her. The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away. Finally she looked back at Darley, with an expression that seemed to say, What are we going to do now, I wonder?

Darley made up his mind quickly. He always did when a woman was in the question. “You can't walk,” he said; “I shall have to carry you.”

Miss Charteris' pale cheeks assumed a rapid flush. “I can walk,” she said, hastily.

“Very well,” said Darley, gently. “Take my arm.”

A few painful steps proved to Miss Charteris that she could walk, at the expense of excruciating agony. So, being a sensible little soul, she stopped.

“You see, it is impossible,” said her knight. “You will have to let me carry you, Miss Charteris. I beg your pardon for not introducing myself. I am Mr. Percy Darley, a guest at Mr. John Leonard's.”

“I knew you were Mr. Darley, but I don't see how you knew that I was Miss Charteris,” said that young lady, looking surprised, and quite forgetting her ankle.

“I have the pleasure of knowing your sister, and I recognized the likeness,” answered Darley, truthfully. “Now, will you allow me? Or I am afraid I shall have to take the law into my own hands.”

“I am not the law,” retorted Miss Charteris, attempting to proceed.

“The very reason that I should become the law,” answered Darley, laughing.

“I think I can hop,” said the girl, desperately. She did so for a few yards, and then came to a last halt. Hopping through deep snow proved rather heavy exercise.

“I am afraid you will have to carry me,” she said in a tone of surrender.

Darley picked her up. She was no weight, this little gray thing, and Darley was an athletic young man. Despite the snow, it did not take him long to reach the farm-house.

The farmer's wife was a kind soul, and knew Miss Charteris. She also knew a sprain, she said, when she saw one; and Miss Charteris' ankle was sprained. So, while the injured member was being attended to by the deft hand of the farmer's wife, Darley posted off to the town for Miss Charteris' aunt's sleigh, the farmer being absent with his own.

Darley secured the sleigh, drove back to the farm-house, and his charge, her ankle warmly and carefully wrapped up, was placed in the cutter and driven home. The family doctor had already arrived, and Darley took his leave.

“May I call and see how you are get-ing on?” he ventured as he said good-by.

“I shall be happy if you will,” said Miss Charteris. But the gray eyes seemed to say to Darley, Could you think of not doing so?

“I am afraid you are in love, or on the way,” said this young man to himself as he walked briskly to his friend's house. “In love, young fellow, and with a real woman, not a woman of the world, but a genuine sweet woman, one worth the loving.”

He related the story as simply as he could to Leonard, and the latter listened quietly. But Darley did not observe the odd look in his friend's eyes during the narration, nor did he guess that Leonard was saying to himself, Ah! my young friend, and have you, too, fallen at the first shaft?

“Shall we go round to the rink?” suggested Leonard the following evening, after dinner, as they sat over their pipes.

“I think I will stroll round and see how Miss Charteris is,” said Darley, smoking furiously. “I will call in at the rink afterward, eh?”

“Very well, old fellow,” was all Leonard said.

Darley found Miss Charteris' ankle improved. The doctor had pronounced it a severe sprain, had prescribed some wonderful liniment, and had alleviated the pain.

“But I shall not be able to be out again for three weeks,” said the invalid, plaintively, on the occasion of a second visit of anxious inquiry. “It is too bad; for I think open-air skating the most exhilarating of all sport! It always seems to lift me up.”

“It didn't seem to lift you up yesterday,” suggested Darley.

“No, indeed. I have thought since that I should be very grateful to you, because, if you had not happened along, I am sure I don't know what I should have done.”

“Don't talk like that, please,” said Darley, gravely. It is wonderful the aversion a young man has to being thanked in a case of this sort—at least, his profession of dislike. “I cannot tell you how unfortunate I regard the doctor's mandate,” said Darley after one of those awkward pauses between two young people who fancy, on a short acquaintance, that they have a tender regard for each other. “On your own account, of course, because I can understand how you feel over losing such a chance as the present ice affords; but chiefly, I am selfish enough to say, on my own behalf, because by the time you are able to skate again, even if the ice is still good, my visit will have come to an end; and I had been hoping, presumptuously enough, I know, to see you often.”

“Will it be really imperative for you to return so soon?” said Miss Charteris, working rapidly at the woolen hood on which she was engaged.

“I am afraid so,” answered Darley, with something very like a sigh. “I could not infringe on too much of Leonard's time——”

“Ah! it is not the city which calls, then?”

“No, it is not the city,” answered Darley, laughing, and being angrily conscious that he was flushing. “But Jack is such a dear good fellow, that I know he would not dream of sending me away.”

Miss Charteris' eyes were on her work, and she plied her fingers rapidly.

“Do you know Leonard very well, Miss Charteris?” continued Darley, as the girl did not venture a remark.

“Oh, yes!” The tone might have suggested that Miss Charteris was agitated; but Darley went on, radiant and sublimely ignorant.

“He is a grand fellow—the one man in the world that I would fall down and worship! I think Shakespeare must have had him in his vaticinal eye when he put those perfect words, that immortal eulogy, in the mouth of Antony: 'His life was gentle; and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'this was a man!'”

The maid came in and asked if she should light the lamps.

“Not just yet. I prefer this twilight. Do you, Mr. Darley?”

“Very much—for itself. It is very satisfying and soothing, and always seems to me like a benediction. But it is very bad for your eyes, and very soon I shall be only able to half see your face.”

“Which will be very good for your eyes. Well, I have done work for today.” Miss Charteris laid the hood away, which Darley had been regarding curiously, and folded her hands in her lap. The action and the moment made Darley think of the “Angelus;” the “Angelus” made him think that it was getting late, and that made him think that it was time to go. The lamps, he said, had come round, and——

“No, sit down, unless you really want to go,” said Miss Charteris. She was remarkably frank, this young lady. “The lamps have not come round; and, on the contrary, I think that my disinclination for them should be taken as proof that I do not think it is time for you to go. Besides, the days are cruelly short now.”

“I find them so,” answered Darley, softly. “Leonard is making everything so comfortable for me that I do not know what I shall feel like when the curtain has rung down. It will seem like awaking suddenly from dreamland to cold earth again. I am sure I shall feel like one of those mountains falling into the sea of dullness that Poe describes: 'Mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore.'”

“You seem a great admirer of Mr. Leonard,” ventured Miss Charteris. There was just the slightest suspicion of jealousy in her tone, which Darley did not notice. Was it because he had inadvertently attributed his loneliness at leaving to his friend's kindness, and not paid her that little tribute of homage which women love? But who knoweth the heart of woman? Darley longed to tell her why he should feel lonely when he came to say good-by; but he did not wish to garnish such a declaration with quotations from poets. Let a man speak from the inspiration of the moment when he tells his love, or hints at it.

“Admirer!” he echoed, in reply to Miss Charteris' remark. “It is more than that. Just think! We were inseparable for years. I wish we had remained so. No one who knows Jack Leonard as I have known him could help thinking him a perfect man, noble and generous, as he is!”

“We are one in that opinion,” answered Miss Charteris, quietly. “And, next to esteeming a noble man, I can esteem his friend who can speak so unselfishly and sincerely of him, as you have done.”

Darley felt touched—not so much at the words, but at the way in which they were spoken, gently, deeply, as if breathing of sincereness. But he did not distinguish anything beyond that in the grave eulogy to Leonard and himself.

At length the lights had to be brought in, and Darley rose to go.

“You said you felt it unfortunate that I should be unable to skate, because you had been hoping to see me often,” said Miss Charteris. She was conscious of a slight flush, but she went bravely on. In certain circumstances a woman has to be what prudes call bold. “Did you mean it?”

“How could you doubt that I meant it? I certainly did mean it.” Darley was a little confused by this frankness. All true women must be coquettes in some degree, was Darley's creed. But Miss Charteris was hardly a coquette even in a slight degree, he thought. It was not frivolousness that prompted her to speak in this way.

“Because, if you meant it,” continued this charming young person, “I shall be glad if you will come and see me as often as you like, if you will not find it dull.”

Miss Spooner, Miss Charteris' aunt, came in at this moment and spoiled the eloquent look of reproach that Darley gave her niece.

“Did you ever see such a girl!” exclaimed Miss Spooner in her high but pleasant voice. Miss Spooner's speech was emphatic, and endowed with realism. Darley felt like saying that he never had, indeed. “I never did! Going into mourning, I believe, because she can't go out and break another ankle! You wouldn't catch me on that ice! I saw it to-day from the bridge—horrible, shiny, treacherous stuff! Not going already, Mr. Darley? Better stop to tea.”

Darley said he could not stop to tea that evening; which meant that he could some other evening, of course, and would be unspeakably happy to do so. All of which Miss Spooner understood; and so she extended her hospitality to him for the next evening.

“Do you know, Percy, I believe you are going to marry Miss Charteris,” said Leonard, quietly, one evening. “Our Miss Charteris, I mean.”

“What makes you say so?”

“I believe you are in love with her; in fact, I know you are. And I hope you will. Nothing could make me happier.” Darley looked the satisfaction he could not speak at this little speech.

“I am in love with her. But I am not good enough for her,” he said, humbly. “I have been a worthless beggar all these years——”

“You can prove your worth,” said Leonard, warmly. “And you must, if you marry Florence Charteris. I know you are not worthless; but you must let the good come to the surface.”

“I shall work,” answered Darley, earnestly. “I begin to feel now the approving glow that comes to a man when he anticipates marrying a woman he loves. But why should I anticipate? I have not the slightest reason to believe that Miss Charteris cares a jot for me!”

“Is that true, Percy?” questioned Leonard, sharply.

Darley did not know whether it was true or not. He did not like to be sanguine, he said. No; he had no reason to think Miss Charteris cared whether he went back to town to-morrow. Not an item of which Leonard believed.

“I hope earnestly you will win her,” he said again. “But you will have to retrench. Florence Charteris is as poor as a church mouse.”

“I am heartily glad of it,” said Darley, warmly. “I shall be the man I have never yet been if I win her.”

“Well, you will win her,” said Leonard. “I feel it in my bones.”

So the days went round; and each one found Darley at Miss Spooner's. Even little Dutton had begun to watch with interest the outcome of this quiet wooing of the little lady whom all the town loved. The evolutions of acquaintance had merged rapidly into the sweeter plane of an almost wordless courtship; but as yet Darley had not ventured to speak He felt fearful lest his dream should be dispelled; and yet, though he was not a vain man, he felt that this lovable little woman cared for him. He could not go back to town and leave his love unspoken, however; because if he had done so this little story would not have been written. And at length came the day when he felt that his visit had been prolonged beyond the limits that even close friendship allows.

“I am going away to-morrow,” he said on this eventful afternoon. It was just such an afternoon as that first one which he had spent there. It was growing dusk; and through the window they could see the red lights of home, those terrestrial apostles of Hesperus, punctuating the white landscape.

“I am going away to-morrow,” repeated Darley. Miss Charteris said nothing, but gazed out of the window.

“Why don't you say something?” he burst out. “Have you nothing to say?”

“What should I say? Do you want me to say good-by? Is it such a sweet word, then, that you are anxious that I should say it now?”

Darley knelt beside the little dusky figure in the rocker. How sweet it is to have the woman you love speak to you like this, and to hear her voice tremble, and to feel that she cares for you!

“No, I don't want you to say good-by,” he said, very gently. “I want you to tell me not to go. Can't you see that the thought of leaving you has been like the thought of eternal darkness to me? I love you, and I want you for my own, always, that I may never know the bitterness of good-by!” Miss Charteris turned her head, and Darley saw that the gray eyes he loved so well were wet. She put out one little white hand till it rested on his.

“Stay!” she whispered.

After a while, when the lamps—those horribly real and unromantic things—were brought in, they talked of other matters. But both seemed very happy, and ready to talk of anything. Even the mysterious hood, which was now completed, came in for a share of attention, and the inquisitive Darley learned that it was for a “poor old soul,” as Miss Charteris expressed it, who lived in a wretched little shanty with a worthless grandson, at the other end of the town. By-and-by Miss Charteris said:

“I have some news for you. Bella was married yesterday. Can you guess to whom?”

“No, I cannot,” answered Darley, almost breathlessly. Bella was the Miss Charteris of the city. He did not know whether to feel glad or indifferent, but he was free of the gentlest touch of spleen. A woman will be conscious of a twinge of pique when she hears that a man with whom she has had some little love affair has married some one else. But Darley was not conscious of any such sensation.

“It was very quiet,” continued Miss Charteris. “At least, I gather so from the paper which tells me of it. Bella never writes me, and not even on this occasion has she done so. However, she is now Mrs. Lawrence Severance.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Darley in a superior tone, which testified that he knew something about it. Then he mentioned having met Severance. He had not said anything of the occurrence before, not caring for Miss Charteris of the city as a subject of conversation with her sister, for reasons best known to himself.

“There is quite a little story about it, you know,” continued Miss Florence. “Lawrence, you know, and Bella have been lovers ever since they were so high, and Bella was Aunt Mary Spooner's favorite. When Aunt Mary died she left a great deal of money for Bella when she should come of age, stipulating, however, that Bella should have only a certain allowance till she was beyond a marriageable age.”

“And, pray, what age is that?” asked Darley, laughing.

“I should not have cared to ask Aunt Mary that question. The reason was that Lawrence was the son of an old sweetheart of Aunt Mary's, who had jilted her without any mercy; and so the sins of the father were visited upon the head of the son. 'Marry Lawrence, my dear,' says Aunt Mary, 'if you like, but you don't have my money. Florence shall have it the day you marry Lawrence Severance.'”

Darley started as if stung. “Eh?” he exclaimed, “I don't understand!”

“Then listen. 'Oh, ho!' quoth Lawrence, when he grew up and understood the story. 'So that is the way of love, is it? Well, there are more fortunes than Aunt Mary's in the world.' And away went Lawrence, nothing daunted, to win—what I hear he has won—double the fortune that Bella, in marrying him, hands over to me.”

“Then you mean to say that this—money comes to you; that you are a rich woman, in fact?” Darley's tone was almost bitten.

“Yes!” answered Miss Florence, gleefully, and clapping her little hands. “Aren't you glad?”

“Glad? I hate it!”

“Hate it?”

“Yes, hate it! I was glorying in the fact that if I won you I would marry a poor woman. Now—” Darley did not finish his sentence.

“You must not talk like that,” said Miss Florence with some asperity. “It is very wrong, and it hurts me, although I know I should be pleased. But I know you love me for all that. Money is a very good thing—God's gift in the hands of those who use it well. There is a great deal of good that we can do with Aunt Mary's money. She was very good herself to the poor, despite her unnatural dislike for Lawrence Severance; and I should like her to know that her mantle had fallen on worthy shoulders. You and I shall use this money to a great purpose.”

“But you don't know what a happy thing it has been to me, this thought of winning you and proving my love by earnest work!”

“And need that resolve be dissipated?” said Miss Florence, gravely. “You shall do that. There is a great deal of work to be done.”

Leonard met Darley on his return, and drew him into the light.

“I have won her, Jack!” said the younger man, grasping his friend's hand. “The sweetest and the noblest woman God ever made!”

“I see it in your face,” said Leonard, huskily. Even Darley could not fail to notice the change in his friend's voice. “What is the matter, old man?” he exclaimed. “You——”

“Nothing, nothing, my boy,” Leonard answered quickly. “But promise me one thing: that you will make her a noble husband, always—always!”

Then Darley understood.

“Dear old Jack!” he said tenderly. “What a fool I have been! Can you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive, my boy—nothing. But you must always be good to her. But never get angry because another man besides yourself worships your wife.”