is no shining light, as mother owns; but she will play
beautifully, if she be properly trained. Well, as to the other girls,
it appears that my father has decided to accept my offer of sending
Susie to a first-class boarding-school; and, as he has determined to
do the same for Laura, there is only Dottie for Mattie to manage or
mismanage. So you see, Gracie, your school-room drudgery is over.
Mother herself, by her own will, has opened the prison-doors."

He spoke in a light jesting tone, but Grace answered, almost
passionately,--

"I tell you no, Archie! I no longer wish it so; it is too late: things
are now quite different."

"What do you mean?" he returned, with a long steady look that seemed
to draw out her words in spite of her resolve not to speak them.

"I mean that things are changed--that you no longer need me, or wish
me to live with you."

"I need you more," he returned, calmly; "perhaps I have never needed
you so much. As for living with me, is it your desire to condemn me to
an existence of perfect loneliness?--for after Christmas Mattie leaves
me. You are mysterious, Grace; you are not your old self."

"Oh, it is you that are not yourself!" she retorted, in a tone of
grief. "Why have you avoided me? why do you withhold your confidence?
why do your letters tell me nothing? and then you come and are still
silent."

"What is it that you would have me tell you?" he asked; but this time
he did not look her in the face.

"I would know this thing that has come between us and robbed me of
your confidence. You are ill at ease; you are unhappy, Archie! You
have never kept a trouble from me before: it was always I who shared
your hopes and fears."

"You may still share them. I am not changed, as you imagine Grace. All
that I can tell you I will, even if you demand it in that
'money-or-your-life' style, as you are doing now," trying to turn it
off with a jest.

"Oh, Archie!"

"Well, what of Archie, now?"

"That you should laugh away my words! you have never done that
before."

"Very well, I will be serious; nay, more, I will be solemn. Grace, I
forbid you ever to mention this thing again, on pain of my bitter
displeasure!"

Then, as she looked at him, too much startled to answer, he went on:

"A man has a right to his own thoughts, if he choose to keep them to
himself and his Maker. There are some things with which even you may
not meddle, Grace. What if my life holds a grief which I would bury
f