lousy, not the first of the kind that he had experienced
in imagining the former life of his darling. "I do not like to think who
may have sat at her feet then. I, too, would like to forget these days."

Ida bent her head still lower and said nothing. It was Miss Ludington who
spoke.

"You have no ground to feel so," she said. "I can bear her witness--and
what better witness could you have?--that till now she never knew what it
is to love. It is true she sat here then as now, and there were others at
her feet, drawn by the same beauty that has drawn you, but their voices
never touched her heart. She had to come back again to earth to learn
what love is."

Paul bent contritely, and kissed Ida's feet as she sat above him,
murmuring, "Forgive me!" Her hand sought his and pressed it with
convulsive strength.

They walked home in silence, gentle Miss Ludington inwardly reproaching
herself for the embarrassment her words had seemed to cause Ida. She
examined her memory afresh. It was very long ago; she was growing old,
and it was natural to suppose that her memory might be losing in
distinctness. Perhaps some, of the sweethearts of that far away time had
been a little nearer, a little dearer, to Ida than to her own fading
memory they seemed to have been. Perhaps she had done a stupid thing in
referring to those days.

Meanwhile, despite of circumstances that would seem peculiarly favourable
to a young girl's happiness, Ida's tendency to melancholy was increasing
upon her at a rate which began to cause Miss Ludington as well as Paul
serious anxiety. She had indeed been pensive from the first, but the
expression of her face, when in repose, had of late become one of
profound dejection. The shadow which they had never been able to banish
from her eyes had deepened into a look of habitual sadness. Coming upon
her unexpectedly, both Miss Ludington and Paul had several times found
her in tears, which she would not or could not explain. Not infrequently,
when she was alone with her lover, and they had been silent awhile, he
had looked up to find her eyes fixed upon him and brimming with tears,
and at other times, when he was in the very act of caressing her, she
would burst out crying, and sob in his arms.

But her unaccountable reluctance to consent to any definite arrangement
for her marriage with the man she tenderly loved, and had promised to
wed, was the most marked symptom of something hysterical in her
condition.

So