ed
cheeks, with rounded arms gleaming through their black laces and the
cluster of roses nestling against the warm white flesh of the
shoulder?

"I do look nice," she said aloud, with a little curtsey to the radiant
reflection. "It is all the dress, I know. I feel like a queen in
it--no, like a girl again--and that's better."

Margaret went to Mrs. Cunningham's door with her.

"How I wish I could go in and see the sensation you'll make, Aunt
Beatrice," she whispered.

"You dear, silly child! It's just the purple and fine linen," laughed
Aunt Beatrice. But she did not altogether think so, and she rang the
doorbell unquailingly. In the hall Mrs. Cunningham herself came
beamingly to greet her.

"My dear Beatrice! I'm so glad. Bella said you could not come because
you had a headache."

"My headache got quite better after they left, and so I thought I
would get ready and come, even if it were rather late," said Beatrice
glibly, wondering if Sapphira had ever worn a black-and-yellow dress,
and if so, might not her historic falsehood be traced to its
influence?

When they came downstairs together, Beatrice, statuesque and erect in
her trailing draperies, and Mrs. Cunningham secretly wondering where
on earth Beatrice Hayden had got such a magnificent dress and what she
had done to herself to make her look as she did--a man came through
the hall. At the foot of the stairs they met. He put out his hand.

"Beatrice! It must be Beatrice! How little you have changed!"

Mrs. Cunningham was not particularly noted in Murraybridge for her
tact, but she had a sudden visitation of the saving grace at that
moment, and left the two alone.

Beatrice put her hand into the M.P.'s.

"I am glad to see you," she said simply, looking up at him.

She could not say that he had not changed, for there was little in
this tall, broad-shouldered man of the world, with grey glints in his
hair, to suggest the slim, boyish young lover whose image she had
carried in her heart all the long years.

But the voice, though deeper and mellower, was the same, and the thin,
clever mouth that went up at one corner and down at the other in a
humorous twist; and one little curl of reddish hair fell over his
forehead away from its orderly fellows, just as it used to when she
had loved to poke her fingers through it; and, more than all, the
deep-set grey eyes looking down into her blue ones were unchanged.
Beatrice felt her heart beating to her fingerti