heed to her fire. All the adroit references to the weather, and the
"glorious day for travelling," went for naught As well as the more
subtle compliments she made Florence on the appetite she displayed for
her chocolate, and which were intended to convey that a young lady who
enjoyed her breakfast so heartily need never have lost a man a passage
to Calcutta for the pleasure of seeing her eat it. Truth was, Aunt
Grainger was not in love, and consequently, no more fit to legislate for
those who were than a peasant in rude health is to sympathise with the
nervous irritability of a fine lady! Neither was Milly in love, you will
perhaps say, and _she_ felt for them. True, but Milly might be--Milly
was constitutionally exposed to the malady, and the very vicinity of the
disease was what the faculty call a predisposing cause. It made her very
happy to see Joseph so fond, and Florence so contented.

Far too happy to think of the price he paid for his happiness, Loyd
passed the day beside her. Never before was he so much in love! Indeed,
it was not till the thought of losing her for ever presented itself,
that he knew or felt what a blank life would hereafter become to him.
Some quaint German writer has it that these little quarrels which
lovers occasionally get up as a sort of trial of their own powers of
independence, are like the attempt people make to remain a long time
under-water, and which only end in a profound conviction that their
organisation was unequal to the test But there is another form these
passing differences occasionally take. Each of the erring parties is
sure to nourish in his or her heart the feeling of being most intensely
beloved by the other! It is a strange form for selfishness to take, but
selfishness is the most Protaean of all failings, and there never was
seen the mask it could not fit to its face.

"And so you imagined you could cast me off, Florence!" "And you, Master
Joseph, had the presumption to think you could leave me," formed the sum
and substance of that long day's whispering. My dear, kind reader, do
not despise the sermon from the seeming simplicity of the text There is
a deal to be said on it, and very pleasantly said, too. It is, besides,
a sort of litigation in which charge and cross charge recur incessantly,
and, as in all amicable suits, each party pays his own costs.

It was fortunate, most fortunate, that their reconciliation took this
form. It enabled each to do that which was m