garde could not take her eyes from his face.

"Dear fellow!" she said. "As if I needed anything but just the sight of
you, and the sound of your--fiddle! And yet,--oh, Jack! Jack! How could
you? How could you _let_ yourself do it?"

Jack had put something into her hands, and was now leaning back in
perfect content, watching her face in turn, and delighted with every
light that danced over it. The something was a bracelet; a little,
shining garland of stars, each star a cluster of "aquamarine" stones,
clear as crystal, with the faintest, most delicate shade of green,
hardly seen in the full light. Not a jewel of great value, but as pretty
a thing as ever a girl saw.

"Jack!" sighed Hilda again. "How could you? There never was anything so
beautiful in the world; that is confessed."

"And the clasp is the moon, you see!" Jack explained, eagerly. "I
thought it looked like the Moonlight Sonata, Hilda, and you used to like
me to play it, you know; and so I thought--you do like it? Now I am
quite happy! Fate has nothing better for me than this. Except one
thing!" he added, turning with boyish shyness from Hilda's warm, almost
reproachful thanks,--she was hardly reconciled to his spending his
hard-earned money on trinkets for her, yet she was genuinely delighted
with the exquisite gift, as any right-minded girl would have been.

"There is one thing more!" said Jack. "And I think I am going to have
that now. Hark! Is not that a step on the veranda? May he--may they come
up here, dear Mrs. Grahame?"

Mrs. Grahame hesitated a moment, glancing at her dainty tea-gown, and
then around at the perfection of the pleasant sitting-room.

"Certainly!" she said, heartily. "If you do not think Colonel Ferrers
will mind,--such an old friend, and he knows I am not well to-day."

Jack and Hilda flew down-stairs as fast as they had flown up; indeed,
Hilda was nearly overthrown by her cousin's impetuous rush.

"I haven't told you yet!" he cried. "Hilda, you guess, don't you? You
know what the best of all is to be? He is here! He--here he is!"

He threw open the door. Colonel Ferrers's stalwart form loomed against
the pale evening sky, and behind it was a tall, slender figure, stooping
somewhat, with a shrinking air like a shy boy.

"Hilda, it is my father!" cried Jack, now at the top of his heaven, and
"Hilda, my dear, my brother Raymond!" cried the Colonel, not a whit less
pleased. Hilda found her hand taken between two slender, white