t seems the wedding is
to come off soon. Proudfute is a relation of theirs, you know."

"No; I did not know it," said Graeme; and in a little she added, "ought
that to make any difference about my going? My note is written but not
sent."

"I should think not. You are not supposed to know anything about it.
It is very likely not true. And it is nothing to us."

"No; that is true," said Graeme. "Rosie, my dear, you are playing too
quickly. That should be quite otherwise at the close," and rising, she
went to the piano and sat down beside her sister. They played a long
time together, and it was Rose who was tired first `for a wonder.'

"Graeme, why did you not tell Harry the true reason that you did not
wish to go to Mrs Roxbury's?" said Rose, when they went up-stairs
together.

"The true reason?" repeated Graeme.

"I mean, why did you not speak to him as you spoke to me?"

"I don't know, dear. Perhaps I ought to have done so. But it is not so
easy to speak to others as it is to you. I am afraid Harry would have
cared as little for the true reason as for the one I gave."

"I don't know, Graeme. He was not satisfied; and don't you think it
would have been better just to say you didn't think it right to go out
so much--to large parties, I mean."

"Perhaps it would have been better," said Graeme, but she said no more;
and sat down in the shadow with her Bible in her hand for the nightly
reading. Rose had finished her preparations for bed before she stirred,
and coming up behind her she whispered softly,--

"Graeme, you are not afraid for Harry now? I mean not more afraid?"

Graeme started. Her thoughts were painful, as her face showed; but they
were not of Harry.

"I don't know, love. I hope not. I pray God, no harm may come to
Harry. Oh! Rosie, Rosie, we have been all wrong this long, long time.
We have been dreaming, I think. We must waken up, and begin again."

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

Graeme's first judgment of Allan Ruthven, had been, "how these ten years
have changed him;" but she quite forgot the first judgment when she came
to see him more, and meeting his kind eyes and listening to his kind
voice, in the days that followed she said to herself, "he is the same,
the very same."

But her first judgment was the true one. He was changed. It would have
been strange if the wear and tear of commercial life for ten years had
not changed him, and that not for the better.

In the renewa