rwhelmed
confusion. "One day, for a little time--aunt Caxton, how can you ask me
such a thing?"

"I had a little story to tell you, my dear; and I wanted to make sure
that I should do no harm in telling it. What is there so dreadful in
such a question?"

But Eleanor only brushed away a hot tear from her flushed face and went
on with her sewing. Or essayed to do it, for Mrs. Caxton thought her
vision seemed to be not very clear.

"What made you think so that time, Eleanor? and what is the matter, my
dear?"

"It hurts me, aunt Caxton, the question. You know we were friends, and
I liked him very much, as I had reason; but I _never_ had cause to
fancy that he thought anything of me--only once I fancied it without
cause."

"On what occasion, my love?"

"It was only a little thing--a nothing--a chance word. I saw
immediately that I was mistaken."

"Did the thought displease you?"

"Aunt Caxton, why should you bring up such a thing now?" said Eleanor
in very great distress.

"Did it displease you, Eleanor?"

"No aunty"--said the girl; and her head dropped in her hands then.

"My love," Mrs. Caxton said very tenderly, "I knew this before; I
thought I did; but it was best to bring it out openly, for I could not
else have executed my commission. I lave a message from Mr. Rhys to
you, Eleanor."

"A message to me?" said Eleanor without raising her head.

"Yes. You were not mistaken."

"In what?"

Eleanor looked up; and amidst sorrow and shame and confusion, there was
a light of fire, like the touch the summer sun gives to the mountain
tops before he gets up. Mrs. Caxton looked at her flushed tearful face,
and the hidden light in her eye; and her next words were as gentle as
the very fall of the sunbeams themselves.

"My love, it is true."

"What, aunt Caxton?"

"You were not mistaken."

"In what, ma'am?"

"In thinking what you thought that day, when something--a mere
nothing--made you think that Mr. Rhys liked you."

"But, aunty," said Eleanor, a scarlet flood refilling the cheeks which
had partially faded,--"I had never the least reason to think so again."

"That is Mr. Rhys's affair. But you may believe it now, for he told me;
and I give it to you on his own testimony."

It was curious to Mrs. Caxton to see Eleanor's face. She did not hide
it; she turned it a little away from her aunt's fill view and sat very
still, while the intense flush passed away and left only a nameless
rosy glow, that almo