et Gerald
Chandos,--he is not worth remembering. And go on with Tod's pinafores
and dresses, my dear, and don't be discouraged if they are a failure at
first,--though to my eyes that dress is a most sumptuous affair. And
as to being like Aimee, you cannot be like any one better and wiser and
sweeter than that same little maiden. There! I mean every word I have
said."

"Are you sure?" faltered Mollie.

"Yes," he replied, "quite sure."

He shook hands with her, and, bidding her goodnight, left her standing
in the narrow hall all aglow 'with joy. And he, outside, was communing
with himself as he walked away.

"She is as sweet in her way as--as the other," he was saying. "And as
well worth loving. And what a face she has, if one only saw it with a
lover's eyes! What a face she has, even seeing it with such impartial
eyes as mine!"

"My dear Dolly!" said Aimee.

"My dear Aimee!" said Dolly.

These were the first words the two exchanged when, the evening after
Ralph Gowan's visit, the anxious young oracle presented herself at
Brabazon Lodge, and was handed into Dolly's bedroom.

Visitors were expected, and Dolly had been dressing, and was just
putting the finishing touches to her toilet when Aimee came in, and,
seeing her as she turned from the glass to greet her, the wise one could
scarcely speak, and, even after she had been kissed most heartily, could
only hold the girl's hand and stand looking up into her changed face,
feeling almost shocked.

"Oh, dear me, Dolly!" she said again. "Oh, my dear, what have you been
doing to yourself?"

"Doing!" echoed Dolly, just as she would have spoken three or four
months ago. "I have been doing nothing, and rather enjoying it. What is
the matter with me?" glancing into the mirror. "Pale? That is the result
of Miss MacDowlas's beneficence, you see. She has presented me with this
grand black silk gown, and it makes me look pale. Black always did, you
know."

But notwithstanding her readiness of speech, it did not need another
glance to understand what Ralph Gowan had meant when he said that she
was altered. The lustreless heavy folds of her black silk might contrast
sharply with her white skin, but they could not bring about that subtle,
almost incomprehensible change in her whole appearance. It was such a
subtle change that it was difficult to comprehend. The round, lissome
figure she had always been so pardonably vain about, and Grif had so
admired, had fallen a little,