o soon
surprised him.

"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been
very lonesome."

She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: "And you?
Have you missed me--a little?"

He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid
a hand upon his arm.

"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I have
missed you--terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she went on
hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell me how it
happened hat you came on to New York."

"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said.

"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this
change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it
one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive
about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted to
the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice."

"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't
it? I can't get used to it myself."

"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed
reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt
and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer."

Peter laughed.

"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he.

He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in
Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever
rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond,
--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads,
--through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at
the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of
that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the
episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's
mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his
companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places.
Comparisons seemed inevitable.

She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a
long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the
valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it was
in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the die
of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. Why
had she never felt it before