ing the paper. Both of them looked up as
the girl entered, and both stared at her in a bewildered way without
rightly knowing why. Ellen's cheeks were a wonderful color, her eyes
fairly blazed with blue light, her mouth was smiling in that
ineffable smile of a simple overflow of happiness.

"Did you ride home on the car?" asked Fanny. "I didn't hear it
stop."

"No, mother."

"Did you come home alone?" asked Andrew, abruptly.

"No," said Ellen, blinking before the glare of the lamp. Fanny
looked at Andrew. "Who did come home with you?" she asked, in a
foolish, fond voice.

"Mr. Robert Lloyd. He was sitting on the piazza when I got there. I
told Miss Lennox I had just as soon come on the cars alone, but she
wouldn't let me, and then he said it would be pleasant to walk,
and--"

"Oh, you needn't make so many excuses," said Fanny, laughing.

Ellen colored until her face was a blaze of roses, she blinked
harder, and turned her head away impatiently.

"I am not making excuses," said she, as if her modesty were
offended. "I wish you wouldn't talk so, mother. I couldn't help it."

"Of course you couldn't," her mother called out jocularly, as Ellen
went into the other room to get her lamp to go to bed.

Fanny was radiant with delight. After Ellen had gone up-stairs, she
kept looking at Andrew, and longing to confide in him her
anticipation with regard to Ellen and young Lloyd, but she
refrained, being doubtful as to how he would take it. Andrew looked
very sober. The girl's beautiful, metamorphosed face was ever before
his eyes, and it was with him as if he were looking after the flight
of a beloved bird into a farther blue which was sacred, even from
the following of his love.

Chapter XXVII

Ellen's first impulse, when she really began to love Robert Lloyd,
was not yielding, but flight; her first sensation, not happiness,
but shame. When he left her that night she realized, to her
unspeakable dismay and anger, that he had not left her, that he
would never in her whole life, or at least it seemed so, leave her
again. Everywhere she looked she saw his face projected by her
memory before her with all the reality of life. His face came
between her and her mother's and father's, it came between her and
her thoughts of other faces. When she was alone in her chamber,
there was the face. She blew out the lamp in a panic of resentment
and undressed in the dark, but that made no difference. When she lay
in bed,