agile figure deceived people into
undervaluing her reserve forces; but there was mature feeling and
purpose enough in her to have put many a woman three times her age
to shame. The light, cool touch of her' hand soothed and controlled
Griffith from the first, and when she put forth all her powers of
reasoning, and set his trouble before him in a more practical and less
headlong way, not a word was lost upon him. She pictured Dolly to
him just as she had found her holding his letter in her hand, and she
pictured her too as she had really been the night he watched her through
the window,--not staying because she cared for Gowan, but because
circumstances had forced her to remain when she was longing in her own
impetuous pretty way to fly to him, and give him the comfort he needed.
And she gave Dolly's story in Dolly's own words, with the little sobs
between, and the usual plentiful sprinkling of sweet, foolish, loving
epithets, and--with innocent artfulness--made her seem so charming and
affectionate, a little centre-figure in the picture she drew, that no
man with a heart in his breast could have resisted her, and by the
time Aimee had finished, Grif was so far moved that it seemed a sheer
impossibility to speak again of relinquishing his claims.

But he could not regain his spirits sufficiently to feel able to say
very much. He quieted down, but he was still down at heart and crushed
in feeling, and could do little else but listen in a hopeless sort of
way.

"I will tell you what you shall do," Aimee said at last. "You shall see
Dolly yourself,--not on the street, but just as you used to see her
when she was at home. She shall come home some afternoon. I know Miss
MacDowlas will let her,--and you shall sit in the parlor together, Grif,
and make everything straight, and begin afresh."

He could not help being roused somewhat by such a prospect. The cloud
was lifted for one instant, even if it fell upon him again the next.

"I shall have to wait a week," he said. "Old Flynn has asked me to go
to Dartmouth, to attend to some business for him, and I leave here
to-morrow morning."

"Very well!" she answered. "If we must wait a week, we must; but you can
write to Dolly in the interval, and settle upon the day, and then she
can speak to Miss MacDowlas."

He agreed to the plan at once, and promised to write to Dolly that very
night. So the young peacemaker's mind was set at rest upon this subject,
at least, and after giv