sdick, isn't it?"

His amazement now was so open-mouthed as well as open-eyed that she
could not help smiling.

"Don't! Don't stare at me like that," she whispered. "Every one is
looking at you. There is old Captain Pease on the other side of the
street; I'm sure he thinks you have had a stroke or something. Here!
Walk down our road a little way toward home with me. We can talk as we
walk. I'm sure," she added, with just the least bit of change in her
tone, "that your Madeline won't object to our being together to that
extent."

She led the way down the side street toward the parsonage and he
followed her. He was still speechless from surprise.

"Well," she went on, after a moment, "aren't you going to say anything?"

"But--but, Helen," he faltered, "how did you know?"

She smiled again. "Then it IS Madeline," she said. "I thought it must
be."

"You--you thought--What made you think so?"

For an instant she seemed on the point of losing her patience.

Then she turned and laid her hand on his arm.

"Oh, Al," she said, "please don't think I am altogether an idiot.
I surmised when your letters began to grow shorter and--well,
different--that there was something or some one who was changing them,
and I suspected it was some one. When you stopped writing altogether, I
KNEW there must be. Then father wrote in his letters about you and about
meeting you, and so often Madeline Fosdick was wherever he met you. So I
guessed--and, you see, I guessed right."

He seized her hand.

"Oh, Helen," he cried, "if you only knew how mean I have felt and how
ashamed I am of the way I have treated you! But, you see, I--I COULDN'T
write you and tell you because we had agreed to keep it a secret. I
couldn't tell ANY ONE."

"Oh, it is as serious as that! Are you two really and truly engaged?"

"Yes. There! I've told it, and I swore I would never tell."

"No, no, you didn't tell. I guessed. Now tell me all about her. She is
very lovely. Is she as sweet as she looks?"

He rhapsodized for five minutes. Then all at once he realized what he
was saying and to whom he was saying it. He stopped, stammering, in the
very middle of a glowing eulogium.

"Go on," said Helen reassuringly. But he could not go on, under the
circumstances. Instead he turned very red. As usual, she divined his
thought, noticed his confusion, and took pity on it.

"She must be awfully nice," she said. "I don't wonder you fell in love
with her. I wish I might