ntle smile, despite the heavy
shadows around her eyes.

"It is all over, Father," she said; "we have parted forever. Perhaps I
did not love him enough to give up so much for him. At any rate I shall
be happier with you, dear."

"Are you sure, my darling?"

"Quite sure; and there is no more to be said of it. Remember, it is
dead and buried; we must never remind each other of it again. Kiss me,
Father, and forget that it has been."

Mr. Levice drew a long sigh, partly of relief, partly of pain, as he
looked into her lovely, resolute face.

Chapter XX

We do not live wholly through ourselves. What is called fate is but the
outcome of the spinning of other individuals twisted into the woof of
our own making; so no life should be judged as a unit.

Ruth Levice was not alone in the world; she was neither recluse nor
a genius, but a girl with many loving friends and a genial home-life.
Having resolved to bear to the world an unchanged front, she outwardly
did as she had always done. Her mother's zealous worldliness returned
with her health; and Ruth fell in with all her plans for a gay
winter,--that is, the plans were gay; Ruth's presence could hardly be
termed so. The old spontaneous laugh was superseded by a gentle smile,
sympathetic perhaps, but never joyous. She listened more, and seldom now
took the lead in a general conversation, though there was a charm about
a tete-a-tete with her that earnest persons, men and women, felt without
being able to define it. For the change, without doubt, was there.
It was as if a quiet hand had been passed over her exuberant, happy
girlhood and left a serious, thoughtful woman in its stead. A subtile
change like this is not speedily noticed by outsiders; it requires usage
before an acquaintance will account it a characteristic instead of a
mood. But her family knew it. Mrs. Levice, wholly in the dark as to the
cause, wondered openly.

"You might be thirty, Ruth, instead of twenty-two, by the staidness
of your demeanor. While other girls are laughing and chatting as girls
should, you look on with the tolerant dignity of a woman of grave
concerns. If you had anything to trouble you, there might be some
excuse; but as it is, why can't you go into enjoyments like the rest of
your friends?"

"Don't I? Why, I hardly know another girl who lives in such constant
gayety as I. Are we not going to a dinner this evening and to the ball
to-morrow night?"

"Yes; but you might as well