ling, said so to
her, and you. Do you remember it, Katy?"

"Yes, I do now, but I had forgotten. I was so stunned then, so
bewildered, that it made no impression. I did not think he meant Morris.
Helen, do you believe he meant Morris?" and lifting up her face, Katy
looked at her sister with a wistfulness which told how anxiously she
waited for the answer.

"I know that he meant Morris," Helen replied. "Bell thinks so, too. So
does her father, and both bade me tell you to revoke your decision, to
marry Dr. Grant, with whom you will be so happy."

"I cannot. It is too late. I told him no, and, Helen, I told him a
falsehood, too, which I wish I might take back," she added. "I said I
was sorry he ever loved me, when I was not, for the knowing that he had
made me very happy. My conscience has smitten me cruelly since for that
falsehood told, not intentionally, for I did not consider what I said."

Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once. She knew just how
conscientious Katy was, and by working upon this principle she hoped to
persuade her into going over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she
said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would
not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage
him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the
rest. She could not be his wife.

Early the next morning Helen went to Linwood, and the same afternoon
Morris returned her call. He had been there two or three times since his
return from Washington, but not since Katy's refusal, and her cheeks
were scarlet as he met him in the parlor and tried to be natural. He did
not look unhappy. He was not taking his rejection very hard, after all,
she thought, and the little lady felt a very little piqued to find him
so cheerful, and even gay, when she had scarcely known a moment's quiet
since the day she carried him the custards, and forgot to bring away her
umbrella. As it had rained that day, so it did now, a decided, energetic
rain, which set in after Morris came, and precluded the possibility of
his going home that night.

"He would catch his death of cold," Aunt Betsy said, while Helen, too,
joined her entreaties until Morris consented, and the carriage which
came around for him at dark returned to Linwood, with the message that
the doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow's. A misty, rainy
night, who does not enjoy it when sitting by a cheerful fire, they
l