ve accepted him. A baby should not be allowed
to roam the world at large without some one to look after him."

"Do you love him, Olga?"

"Yes, I do," says Olga, defiantly. "You may scold me if you like, but a
title _isn't_ everything, and he is worth a dozen of that cold, stiff
Rossmoyne."

"Well, dearest, as you have given him the best part of you,--your
heart,--it is as well the rest should follow," says Mrs. Herrick,
tenderly. "Yes, I think you will be very happy with him."

This speech is so strange, so unexpected, so exactly unlike anything she
had made up her mind to receive, that for a moment Olga is stricken
dumb. Then with a rush she comes back to glad life.

"'Do I wake? do I dream? are there visions about?'" she says. "Why, what
sentiments from _you_! You have 'changed all that,' apparently."

"I have," says Hermia, very slowly, yet with a vivid blush. Something in
her whole manner awakes suspicion of the truth in Olga's mind.

"Why," she says, "you don't mean to tell me that----Oh, no! it can't be
true! and yet----I verily believe you have----_Is_ it so, Hermia?"

"It is," says Hermia, who has evidently, by help of some mental process
of her own, understood all this amazing farrago of apparently
meaningless words.

There is a new sweetness on Mrs. Herrick's lips. One of her rare smiles
lights up all her calm, artistic face.

"After all your vaunted superiority!" says Olga, drawing a deep sigh.
"Oh, _dear_!" Then, with a wicked but merry imitation of Mrs. Herrick's
own manner to her, she goes on!--

"You are throwing yourself away, dearest. The world will think nothing
of you for the future; and you, so formed to shine, and dazzle,
and----"

"_He_ will be a baronet at his father's death," says Mrs. Herrick,
serenely, with a heavy emphasis on the first pronoun; and then suddenly,
as though ashamed of this speech, she lets her mantle drop from her, and
cries, with some tender passion,----

"I don't care about that. Hear the truth from me. If he were as ugly and
poor as Mary Browne's Peter, I should marry him all the same, just
because I love him!"

"Oh, Hermia, I am so _glad_," says Olga. "After all what is there in the
whole wide world so sweet as love? And as for Rossmoyne,--why, he
couldn't make a tender speech to save his life as it should be made;
whilst Ulic--_oh he's charming!_"

CHAPTER XXXI.

How Monica's heart fails her; and how at last Hope (whose name is
Brian) comes b