strengthen the belief. Nothing could he more probable,
thrown together as they had been, without other congenial society, and
nothing could be more suitable.

"They are well matched," Mark thought, as he walked listlessly through
Mrs. Reynolds' parlors, seeing only one face, and that the face of Helen
Lennox, with the lily in her hair, just as it looked when she had tied
the apron about his neck and laughed at his appearance.

Helen was not the ideal which in his boyhood Mark had cherished of the
one who was to be his wife, for that was of a more brilliant, beautiful
woman, a woman more like Juno, with whom he had always been on the best
of terms, giving her some reason, it is true, for believing herself the
favored one; but ideals change as years go on, and Helen Lennox had more
attractions for him now than the most dashing belle of his acquaintance.

"I do not believe I am in love with her," he said to himself that night,
when, after his return from Mrs. Reynolds' he sat for a long time before
the fire in his dressing-room, cogitating upon what he had heard, and
wondering why it should affect him so much. "Of course I am not," he
continued, feeling the necessity of reiterating the assertion by way of
making himself believe it. "She is not at all what I used to imagine the
future Mrs. Mark Ray to be. Half my friends would say she had no style,
no beauty, and perhaps she has not. Certainly she does not look just
like the ladies at Mrs. Reynolds' to-night, but give her the same
advantages and she would surpass them all."

And then Mark Ray went off into a reverie, in which he saw Helen Lennox
his wife, and with the aids by which he would surround her rapidly
developing into as splendid a woman as little Katy Cameron, who did not
need to be developed, but took all hearts at once by that natural,
witching grace so much a part of herself. It was a very pleasant picture
which Mark painted upon the mental canvas; but there came a great blur
blotting out its brightness as he remembered Dr. Grant, and felt that
Linwood was one day to be Helen's home.

"But it shall not interfere with my being just as kind to her as before.
She will need some attendant here, and Wilford, I know, will be glad to
shove her off his hands. He is so infernal proud," Mark said, and taking
a fresh cigar he finished his reverie with the magnanimous resolve that
were Helen a hundred times engaged she should be his especial care
during her sojourn in