. Someone had told him I was doing things on
the sly which he had better look into; and of course he asked questions
and--and I answered them. He wasn't pleased--in fact he was very
displeased,--I don't think we can blame him for that--but we had no open
break for I love him dearly, for all my opposing ways, and he saw that,
and it helped, though he did say after I had given my promise to stop
where I was and never to take up such work again, that--" here she stole
a shy look at the face bent so eagerly towards her--"that I had lost my
social status and need never hope now for the attentions of--of--well,
of such men as he admires and puts faith in. So you see," her dimples
all showing, "that I am not such a very good match for an Upjohn of
Massachusetts, even if he has a reputation to recover and an honourable
name to achieve. The scale hangs more evenly than you think."

"Violet!"

A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as
the breath of flowers rising from the garden below: "I have never known
what happiness was till this moment. If you will take me with my story
untold--"

"Take you! take you!" The man's whole yearning heart, the loss and
bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in
that low, half-smothered exclamation. Violet's blushes faded under its
fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid
her two hands in his, and said with all a woman's earnestness:

"I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many
more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea. Such union
as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy
besides ourselves."

The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of
closely written paper in his hand. They contained her story; let us read
it with him.

DEAR ROGER,--

I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke
up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no
child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My
father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do not know that I have
a sister; few of my personal friends do,--and the terror she evinced
I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
displeasure.

There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with
all its