miss it more than I shall. He might live without me
perhaps, but I could n't live without him. I wonder if ever two people
cared for each other as we do before? And I wonder if the time will ever
come--" And there she broke off again, and ended as she so often did.
"Poor old fellow!" she said. "Poor, dear, patient, faithful fellow! how
I love you!"

She hurried on briskly after this, but she was wondering all the
time what he would say when he found out that they were really to be
separated. He would rebel, she knew, and anathematize fate vehemently.
But she knew the rest of them would regard it as rather a rich joke that
chance should have thrown her into the hands of Miss MacDowlas. They had
all so often laughed at Griffith's descriptions of her and her letters,
given generally when he had been galled into a caustic mood by the
arrival of one of the latter.

Beaching Bloomsbury Place, Dolly found her lover there. He had dropped
in on his way to his lodgings, and was awaiting her in a fever of
expectation, having heard the news from Aimee.

"What is this Aimee has been telling me?" he cried, the moment she
entered the room. "You can't be in earnest, Doll! You can't leave home
altogether, you know."

She tossed her muff on the table and sat down on one of the low chairs,
with her feet on the fender.

"I thought so until this morning," she said, a trifle mournfully; "but
it can't be helped. The fact is, it is all settled now. I am an engaged
young person."

"Settled!" exclaimed Griffith, indignantly. "Engaged! Dolly, I did n't
think you would have done it."

"I could n't help doing it," said Dolly, her spirits by no means rising
as she spoke. "How could I?"

But he would not be consoled by any such cold comfort. He had regarded
the possibility of her leaving the house altogether as something not
likely to be thought of. Very naturally, he was of the opinion that
Dolly was as absolute a necessity to every one else as she was to
himself. What _should_ he do without her? How could he exist? It was an
unreasoning insanity to talk about it. He was so roused by his subject
indeed, that, neither of them being absolutely angelic in temperament,
they wandered off into something very like a little quarrel about
it,--he, goaded to lover-like madness by the idea that she could live
without him; she, finding her low spirits culminate in a touch of anger
at his hotheaded, affectionate obstinacy.

"But it is not to be expe