cooled down a little, though I was wretched enough."

"The 'something' was paying the taxes, was n't it?" questioned Dolly.

"Something of that kind," admitted Griffith.

"Ah," said Dolly, "I thought so."

Very naturally Griffith felt some slight embarrassment on encountering
Miss MacDowlas, having a rather unpleasant recollection of various
incidents of the past. But Miss Berenice faced the matter in a different
manner and with her usual decision of character. She had made up her
mind to receive Griffith Donne as a respectable fact, and then, through
Dolly's eloquence, she had learned to regard him with even a sort of
affection,--a vague affection, of course, at the outset, but one which
would ripen with time. Thus she rather surprised him by confronting him
upon an entirely new ground. She was cordial and amiable, and on
the first opportunity she explained her change of feeling with great
openness.

"I have heard so much of you from Dolly," she said, "that I am convinced
I have known nothing of you before. I hope we shall be better friends. I
am very fond of Dolly. I wish I had known her three or four years ago."

And there was such a softened tenderness in her thin, unpromising face,
that from thenceforward Griffith's doubts were removed and his opinion
altered, as hers had done. The woman who had loved and pitied Dolly
when she so sorely needed pity and love, must be worthy of gratitude and
affection.

Phil and 'Toinette and Mollie arriving, in the deepest affliction, to
receive Dolly's last farewell, were rather startled by the turn affairs
had taken. Changed as she was, the face she turned to greet them was not
the face of a dying girl. She was deplorably pale and shrunken and thin,
but the light of life was in her eyes and a new ring was in her voice.
She had vitality enough to recognize fresh charms in Tod, and spirit
enough to make a few jokes.

"She won't die," commented Phil to his wife when they retired to their
room.

"No," said Mrs. Phil, discreetly, "it is not likely, now Grif has come
back. But it won't do to waste the journey, Phil, so we may as well stay
awhile. We have not been anywhere out of London this summer."

Accordingly, with their usual genius for utilizing all things, they
prolonged their visit and made it into a kind of family festival; and
since their anxiety on Dolly's behalf was at an end, they managed
to enjoy it heartily. They walked here, and rode there, and explored
unhea