re loyal and devoted? How was it that the quiet hilarity of the
morning was not gone, but stole into his conversation with her so
pointedly that she could not help feeling that it magnetized her, and
that, against her will, she was more than ever cheerful? How was it that
she knew it was herself who helped make that hilarity--that it was not
only her friend Hope who inspired it?

They are secrets not to be told. But as they all sat around the table,
and Arthur Merlin for the first time insisted upon reading from Byron,
and in his rich melancholy voice recited

"Though the day of my destiny's over,"

It was clear that the cloud had lifted--that the spell of constraint
was removed; and yet none of them precisely understood why.

"To-morrow, then," said Lawrence Newt as they parted.

"To-morrow," echoed Amy Waring and Hope Wayne.

Arthur Merlin pulled his cap over his eyes and sauntered slowly homeward,
whistling musingly, and murmuring,

"A bird in the wilderness singing,
That speaks to my spirit of thee."

His Aunt Winnifred heard him as he came in. The good old lady had placed
a fresh tract where he would be sure to see it when he entered his room.
She heard his cautious step stealing up stairs, for the painter was
careful to make no noise; and as she listened she drew pictures upon her
fancy of the scenes in which her boy had been mingling. It was Aunt
Winnifred's firm conviction that society--that is, the great world of
which she knew nothing--languished for the smile and presence of her
nephew, Arthur. That very evening her gossip, Mrs. Toxer, had been in,
and Aunt Winnifred had discussed her favorite theme until Mrs. Toxer went
home with a vague idea that all the young and beautiful unmarried women
in the city were secretly pining away for love of Arthur Merlin.

"Mercy me, now!" said Aunt Winnifred as she lay listening to the creaking
step of her nephew. "I wonder what poor girl's heart that wicked boy has
been breaking to-night;" and she turned over and fell asleep again.

That young man reached his room, and struck a light. It flashed upon a
paper. He took it up eagerly, then smiled as he saw that it was a tract,
and read, "A word to the Unhappy."

"Dear Aunt Winnifred!" said he to himself; "does she think a man's griefs
are like a child's bumps and bruises, to be cured by applying a piece of
paper?"

He smiled sadly, with the profound conviction that no man had ever before
really known what unhappi