your happiness to yourself,--the happiness,"
as the girl looked at her in surprise, "that is coming to you and
Dulce. It was because you were not like other girls--because you were
brave, self-reliant gentlewomen, afraid of nothing but dishonor; not
fearful of small indignities, or of other people's opinions, but just
taking up the work that lay to your hands, and going through with
it--that you have won his heart: and, seeing this, how could he help
loving you as he does?" But to this Phillis made no answer.

The next day was rather trying to them all. Phillis's cheerfulness was
a little forced, and for some time after they had left the
Friary--with Grace and Archie waving their farewells from the
road--she was very silent.

But no sooner had they crossed the threshold of Glen Cottage than
their girlhood asserted itself. The sight of the bright snug rooms,
with their new furniture, the conservatory, with its floral treasures,
and Sir Harry's cheery welcome, as he stood in the porch with Mrs.
Mayne, was too much even for Phillis's equanimity. In a few minutes
their laughing faces were peering out of every window and into every
cupboard.

"Oh, the dear, beautiful home! Isn't it lovely of Harry to bring us
back!" cried Phillis, oblivious of everything at that moment but her
mother's satisfied face.

In a few days they had settled down into their old life. It was too
early for tennis while snowdrops and crocuses were peeping out of the
garden borders. But in the afternoon friends dropped in in the old
way, and gathered round the Challoner tea-table; and very soon--for
Easter fell early that year--Dick showed himself among them, and then,
indeed, Nan's cup of happiness was full.

But as April passed on Phillis began to grow a little silent again;
and it became a habit with her to coax Laddie to take long walks with
her, when Nan and Dulce were otherwise engaged. The exercise seemed to
quiet her restlessness; and the spring sights and sounds, the budding
hedgerows, and the twittering of the birds as they built their nests,
and the fresh leafy green, unsoiled by summer heat and dust, seemed to
refresh her flagging spirits.

It was the 1st of May, when one afternoon she called to Laddie, who
was lying drowsily in the sunny porch. Nan, who was busily engaged in
training the creeper round the pillars of the veranda, looked up in a
little surprise:

"Are you going out again, Phil? And neither Dulce nor I can come with