will doubtless be impossible and grotesque. I
shall be gone but one short hour, and when I return I shall have much to
tell you."

"She dreams," explained Iris, in a low voice, as the mistress of the
mansion smiled back at them over the railing, "and when she wakes she
always tells me."

Lynn went out for a long tramp, after vainly endeavouring to persuade
his mother or Iris to accompany him. "I'm walked enough at night as it
is," said Mrs. Irving, and the girl excused herself on account of her
household duties.

He clattered down the steps, banged the gate, and went whistling down
the elm-bordered path. The mother listened, fondly, till the cheery
notes died away in the distance. "Bless his heart," she said to herself,
"how fine and strong he is and how much I love him!"

The house seemed to wait while its guardian spirit slept. Left to
herself, Margaret paced to and fro; down the long hall, then back,
through the parlour and library, and so on, restlessly, until she
reflected that she might possibly disturb Aunt Peace.

A love-lorn robin, in the overhanging boughs of the maple at the gate,
was unsuccessfully courting a disdainful lady who sat on the topmost
twig and paid no attention to him. From the distant orchard came the
breath of apple blooms, and a single bluebird winged his solitary way
across the fields, his colour gleaming brightly for an instant against
the silvery clouds. Beautiful as it was, Margaret sighed, and her face
lost its serenity.

A bit of verse sang itself through her memory again and again.

"Who wins his love shall lose her,
Who loses her shall gain,
For still the spirit wooes her,
A soul without a stain,
And memory still pursues her
With longings not in vain.

* * *

"In dreams she grows not older
The lands of Dream among;
Though all the world wax colder,
Though all the songs be sung,
In dreams doth he behold her--
Still fair and kind and young."

"Dreams," she murmured, "empty dreams, while your soul starves."

Iris tiptoed in with her sewing and sat down. Margaret felt her presence
in the room, but did not turn away from the window. Iris was one of
those rare people with whom one could be silent and not feel that the
proprieties had been injured.

Deep down in her heart, Margaret had stored away all the bitterness of
her life--that single drop which is well enough when left by