cted," he broke out at last, without any
reason whatever,--"it is not to be expected that you can contend against
everything. You are tired of disappointment, and I don't blame you.
I should be a selfish dolt if I did. If Gowan had been in my place he
could have married you, and have given you a home of your own. I never
shall be able to do that. But," with great weakness and evidence of
tribulation at the thought, "I didn't think you would be so cool about
it, Dolly."

"Cool!" cried Dolly, waxing wroth and penitent both at once, as usual.
"Who is cool? Not I, that is certain. I shall miss you every hour of my
life, Griffith." And the sad little shadow on her face was so real that
he was pacified at once.

"I am an unreasonable simpleton!" was his next remorseful outburst.

"You have said that before," said Dolly, rather hard-heartedly; but in
spite of it she did not refuse to let him be as affectionate as he chose
when he knelt down by her chair, as he did the next minute.

"It would be a great deal better for me," she half whispered, breaking
the suspicious silence that followed,--"it would be a great deal better
for _me_ if I did not care for you half so much;" and yet at the same
time she leaned a trifle more toward him in the most traitorous of
half-coaxing, half-reproachful ways.

"It would be the death of _me_," said Griffith; and he at once plunged
into an eloquently persuasive dissertation upon the height and depth
and breadth and force of his love for her. He was prone to such
dissertations, and always ready with one to improve any occasion; and
I am compelled to admit that, far from checking him, Dolly rather liked
them, and was given to encourage and incite him to their delivery.
When this one was ended, he was quite in the frame of mind to listen
to reason, and let her enter into particulars concerning her morning's
efforts, which she did, at length, only adding a flavor of the
mysterious up to the introduction of Miss MacDowlas.

"What!" cried out Griffith, when she let out the secret. "Confound it!
No! Not Aunt MacDowlas in the flesh, Dolly? You are joking."

"No," answered Dolly, shaking her head at the amazed faces of the girls,
who had come in during the recital, and who had been guilty of the
impropriety of all exclaiming at once when the climax was reached. "I
am in earnest. I am engaged as companion to no less a person than Miss
Berenice MacDowlas."

"Why, it is like something out of a thre