w looking up at him inquiringly, with eyes
earnest and beautiful and deep, but so cold. They chill him in spite
of his efforts to disbelieve in their fatal truthfulness.

"Hardly, I think," he says, with an attempt at gayety. "Something else
is wanting, surely. Georgie, when I asked you to marry me yesterday,
and when you gave the promise that has made me so unutterably happy
ever since, what was it you thought of?"

"Well, I'll tell you," says Miss Broughton, cheerfully. "First, I said
to myself, 'Now I shall never again have to teach Murray's Grammar.'"

"Was that your _first_ thought?" He is both surprised and pained.

"Yes, my very first. You look as if you didn't believe me," says Miss
Broughton, with a little laugh. "But if you had gone through as many
moods and tenses as I have during the past week, you would quite
understand. Well, then I thought how good it would be to have nothing
to do but amuse myself all day long. And then I looked at you, and
felt so glad you had no crooked eyes, or red hair, or anything that
way. And then, above all things, I felt how sweet it was to know I had
found somebody who would have to look after me and take care of me, so
that I need never trouble about myself any more."

"Did you never once think of me?" asks he, in a curious tone.

"Of you? Oh, no! You are quite happy," says Georgie, with a sigh. "You
have nothing to trouble you."

"Nothing! Of course not." Going up to her, he takes her dear little
face between both his hands, and looks long and earnestly into her
clear unconscious eyes. How gladly would he have seen them droop and
soften beneath his gaze! "Now let me tell you how I feel towards you,"
he says, smoothing her soft hair back from her forehead.

"I don't think I am a bit pretty with my hair pushed back," she says,
moving away from the caressing hand, and, with a touch, restoring her
"amber locks" to their original position. She smiles as she says
this,--indeed, ill temper, in any form, does not belong to her,--and,
when her hair is once more restored to order, she again slips her
fingers into his confidingly, and glances up at him. "Now tell me all
about it," she says.

"What am I to tell you?--that when I am away from you I am restless,
miserable; when with you, more than satisfied. I know that I could sit
for hours contentedly with this little hand in mine" (raising it to
his lips), "and I also know that, if fate so willed it, I should
gladly follow you