dull, aching feeling which I
have when he passes me by is anything like what poor Wallace Forbes felt
about me. If it is, I am even more sorry for Wallace than before. Of
course, I am not in love with Will--I couldn't be, for he is engaged to
Rachel, and I have known it from the first, but I can't help thinking
about him, and watching for him, and feeling happy if he comes, and
wretched if he stays away. And I know his face by heart and just how it
looks on every occasion. His eyes don't twinkle nearly so much as they
did; he is graver altogether, except sometimes when I have a mad mood
and set myself to make him frisky too. I can always succeed, but I
don't try often, for I fancy Rachel doesn't like it. She can't frisk
herself, poor dear, and it must feel horrid to feel left out in the cold
by your very own _fiance_. I should hate it myself.

At the beginning of this month I had a great treat. Lorna came to stay
with me for three days. She was visiting a friend twenty miles off, and
came here in the middle of her visit just for that short time, so that
there need be no necessity for Wallace to know anything about it. Of
course, she came with her parents' consent and approval, and oh, how
thankful I was to see her and to look upon her coming as a sign that
they were beginning to forgive me. Of course we talked shoals about
Wallace, for I just longed to know how he was faring.

"My dear, it was awful after you left--positively awful!" Lorna said.
"Wallace went about looking like a ghost, and mother cried, and father
was worried to death. Wallace declared at first that he would go
abroad, but father told him that it was cowardly to throw up his work
for the sake of a disappointment, however bitter, and mother asked if he
really cared so little for his parents that he could forsake them in
their old age for the sake of a girl whom he had only known a month. He
gave way at last, as I knew he would, and set to work harder than ever.
He was very brave, poor old boy, and never broke down nor made any fuss,
but he was so silent! You would not have known him. He never seemed to
laugh, nor to joke, nor take any interest in what was going on, and the
whole winter long he never once entered my little den, where we had had
such happy times. I suppose it reminded him too much of you. This
spring, however, he has been brighter. I insisted on his taking me to
the tennis club as usual, and though he went at first for