s it's rising high enough for
_him_ to be the Archdeacon of the afflicted, the Dean of the hungry, and
the Bishop of the poor. With all his oddities, as good a fellow as ever
lived. Immensely popular with the women. They all go to him for advice.
I wish you would go, too."

Mercy changed color. "What do you mean?" she asked, sharply.

"Julian is famous for his powers of persuasion," said Horace, smiling.
"If _he_ spoke to you, Grace, he would prevail on you to fix the day.
Suppose I ask Julian to plead for me?"

He made the proposal in jest. Mercy's unquiet mind accepted it as
addressed to her in earnest. "He will do it," she thought, with a sense
of indescribable terror, "if I don't stop him!" There is but one chance
for her. The only certain way to prevent Horace from appealing to his
friend was to grant what Horace wished for before his friend entered the
house. She laid her hand on his shoulder; she hid the terrible anxieties
that were devouring her under an assumption of coquetry painful and
pitiable to see.

"Don't talk nonsense!" she said, gayly. "What were we saying just
now--before we began to speak of Mr. Julian Gray?"

"We were wondering what had become of Lady Janet," Horace replied.

She tapped him impatiently on the shoulder. "No! no! It was something
you said before that."

Her eyes completed what her words had left unsaid. Horace's arm stole
round her waist.

"I was saying that I loved you," he answered, in a whisper.

"Only that?"

"Are you tired of hearing it?"

She smiled charmingly. "Are you so very much in earnest about--about--"
She stopped, and looked away from him.

"About our marriage?"

"Yes."

"It is the one dearest wish of my life."

"Really?"

"Really."

There was a pause. Mercy's fingers toyed nervously with the trinkets at
her watch-chain. "When would you like it to be?" she said, very softly,
with her whole attention fixed on the watch-chain.

She had never spoken, she had never looked, as she spoke and looked now.
Horace was afraid to believe in his own good fortune. "Oh, Grace!" he
exclaimed, "you are not trifling with me?"

"What makes you think I am trifling with you?"

Horace was innocent enough to answer her seriously. "You would not even
let me speak of our marriage just now," he said.

"Never mind what I did just now," she retorted, petulantly. "They say
women are changeable. It is one of the defects of the sex."

"Heaven be praised for the defects of