"I think that would be the best plan," said Mrs. Dutton.

"Perhaps it would," answered her husband.

"I will write him a note, then, asking him to call this evening,"
ventured Nellie.

Her father nodded assent. This gave her a thrill of pleasure. At last
she could invite Fred to call and could surprise him with the facts she
had in her possession.

During the afternoon Fred received a neatly written note from Nellie,
simply asking him to call that evening. It was so brief, and so entirely
unexpected, he was puzzled to know what it meant. At any rate, he was
delighted at the thought of seeing his friend once more, and in her own
home, too--let her object be what it would.

He concluded, after much speculation, that it must be favorable, for he
could not possibly imagine why she should want him to call if it were
otherwise.

They had hardly met since the night of the party, when they parted
company at her home after a most enjoyable evening. Then each felt more
than an ordinary regard for the friendship of the other, and doubtless
little imagined that it would be so suddenly broken in upon by the
suspicious circumstances that speedily surrounded Fred. This, together
with De Vere's efforts to establish himself in Nellie's good opinion,
had separated them.

Among all the trials and misfortunes that had come upon him, Fred found
this change in Nellie's manner touched him in a way that nothing else
had done. Why this should be so, he was at a loss to know, for he had
looked upon her simply as a friend.

And with Nellie, his absence for weeks, when she had seen him almost
daily from childhood up, made her lonely. She wondered why she thought
so often of him, and why she should have felt a sense of jealousy when
he said Grace was a better friend to him than she, and again when she
called and told with such evident pleasure of Fred's triumph at the
trial.

There also were the beautiful flowers he had sent, from which she
selected a delicate white rose, which she had worn upon her breast till
it withered, and then had pressed it in a book and put it carefully away
where it would be preserved.

All these thoughts occurred to her while she was sick at heart--all
these, and many more, regarding Fred's kindness and agreeable manners.
She thought of the party, of their delightful walk home after it was
over, of the attention he had shown her and of the complimentary remark
that she "had given him the pleasantest evenin