"

She grew suddenly wistful as she eyed her friend:

"You _have_ changed a lot since you were married, Fan; all the girls
think so. Sometimes I feel almost afraid of you. Is it--do you--?"

Fanny's unaccountable resentment melted before a sudden rush of
sympathy and understanding. She drew Ellen's blushing face close to
her own in the sweetness of caresses:

"I'm _so_ glad for you, dear, so _glad!_"

"And you'll tell Jim?" begged Ellen, after a silence full of thrills.
"I should hate to have him suppose--"

"He doesn't, Ellen," Jim's sister assured her, out of a secret fund
of knowledge to which she would never have confessed. "Jim always
understood you far better than I did. And he likes you, too, better
than any girl in Brookville."

"Except Lydia," amended Ellen.

"Oh, of course, except Lydia."

Chapter XXIX

There was a warm, flower-scented breeze stirring the heavy foliage
drenched with the silver rain of moonlight, and the shrilling of
innumerable small voices of the night. It all belonged; yet neither
the man nor the woman noticed anything except each other; nor heard
anything save the words the other uttered.

"To think that you love me, Lydia!" he said, triumph and humility
curiously mingled in his voice.

"How could I help it, Jim? I could never have borne it all, if you--"

"Really, Lydia?"

He looked down into her face which the moonlight had spiritualized to
the likeness of an angel.

She smiled and slipped her hand into his.

They were alone in the universe, so he stooped and kissed her,
murmuring inarticulate words of rapture.

After uncounted minutes they walked slowly on, she within the circle
of his arm, her blond head against the shoulder of his rough tweed
coat.

"When shall it be, Lydia?" he asked.

She blushed--even in the moonlight he could see the adorable flutter
of color in her face.

"I am all alone in the world, Jim," she said, rather sadly. "I have
no one but you."

"I'll love you enough to make up for forty relations!" he declared.
"And, anyway, as soon as we're married you'll have mother and Fan
and--er--"

He made a wry face, as it occurred to him for the first time that the
Reverend Wesley Elliot was about to become Lydia's brother-in-law.

The girl laughed.

"Haven't you learned to like him yet?" she inquired teasingly.

"I can stand him for a whole hour at a time now, without experiencing
a desire to kick him," he told her. "But why should we