believe it
when it came, and don't deserve it; but I will! for the knowledge that
he loves me seems to make everything possible," said Fanny, with an
expression which made her really beautiful, for the first time in her
life.

"You happy girl!" sighed Polly, then smiled and added, "I think you
deserve all that 's come to you, for you have truly tried to be worthy
of it, and whether it ever came or not that would have been a thing to
be proud of."

"He says that is what made him love me," answered Fanny, never calling
her lover by his name, but making the little personal pronoun a very
sweet word by the tone in which she uttered it. "He was disappointed in
me last year, he told me, but you said good things about me and though
he did n't care much then, yet when he lost you, and came back to me, he
found that you were not altogether mistaken, and he has watched me
all this winter, learning to respect and love me better every day. Oh,
Polly, when he said that, I could n't bear it, because in spite of all
my trying, I 'm still so weak and poor and silly."

"We don't think so; and I know you 'll be all he hopes to find you, for
he 's just the husband you ought to have."

"Thank you all the more, then, for not keeping him yourself," said
Fanny, laughing the old blithe laugh again.

"That was only a slight aberration of his; he knew better all the time.
It was your white cloak and my idiotic behavior the night we went to the
opera that put the idea into his head," said Polly, feeling as if the
events of that evening had happened some twenty years ago, when she was
a giddy young thing, fond of gay bonnets and girlish pranks.

"I 'm not going to tell Tom a word about it, but keep it for a surprise
till he comes. He will be here next week, and then we 'll have a
grand clearing up of mysteries," said Fan, evidently feeling that the
millennium was at hand.

"Perhaps," said Polly, as her heart fluttered and then sunk, for this
was a case where she could do nothing but hope, and keep her hands busy
with Will's new set of shirts.

There is a good deal more of this sort of silent suffering than the
world suspects, for the "women who dare" are few, the women who "stand
and wait" are many. But if work-baskets were gifted with powers of
speech, they could tell stories more true and tender than any we read.
For women often sew the tragedy or comedy of life into their work as
they sit apparently safe and serene at home, yet are th