ling. "If you will let me, I can at least try to
be."

"Try, then, by all means." In a moment or two,--"I should like to
fathom your thoughts," says Molly. "When I came in, there was more than
bewilderment in your face; it showed--how shall I express it? You
looked as though you had expected something else?"

"Will you forgive me if I say I did?"

"What, then? A creature tall, gaunt, weird----?"

"No."

"Fat, red, uncomfortable?"

This touches so nearly on the truth as to be unpleasant. He winces.

"I will tell you what I did not expect," he says, hastily, coloring a
little. "How should I? It is so seldom one has the good luck to
discover in autumn a rose belonging to June."

His voice falls.

"Am I one?" asks she, looking with dangerous frankness into the dark
eyes above her, that are telling her silently, eloquently, she is the
fairest, freshest, sweetest queen of flowers in all the world.

The door opens, and Mr. Amherst enters, then Marcia. Philip straightens
himself, and puts on his usual bored, rather sulky expression. Molly
smiles upon her grumpy old host. He offers her his arm, Philip does the
same to Marcia, and together they gain the dining-room.

It is an old, heavily wainscoted apartment, gloomy beyond words, so
immense that the four who dine in it tonight appear utterly lost in its
vast centre.

Marcia, in an evening toilet of black and ivory, sits at the head of
the table, her grandfather opposite to her. Philip and Molly are
_vis-a-vis_ at the sides. Behind stand the footmen, as sleek and
well-to-do, and imbecile, as one can desire.

There is a solemnity about the repast that strikes but fails to subdue
Molly. It has a contrary effect, making her spirits rise, and creating
in her a very mistaken desire for laughter. She is hungry too, and
succeeds in eating a good dinner, while altogether she comes to the
conclusion that it may not be wholly impossible to put in a very good
time at Herst.

Never does she raise her eyes without encountering Philip's dark ones
regarding her with the friendliest attention. This also helps to
reassure her. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and this friend is
handsome as well as kind, although there is a little something or
other, a suppressed vindictiveness, about his expression, that repels
her.

She compares him unfavorably with Luttrell, and presently lets her
thoughts wander on to the glad fact that to-morrow will see the latter
by her side, when i