glowed faintly in the frosty air.

Gifford sighed as he walked on. "They are very happy," he thought. "Well,
that sort of happiness may never be for me, but it is something to love a
good woman. I have got that in my life, anyhow."

Helen's confidence in her cousin's instinct might perhaps have been
shaken had she known what pleasure Lois found in the companionship of Mr.
Forsythe, and how that pleasure was encouraged by all her friends. That
very evening, while Gifford was pouring his anxieties into her ear, Lois
was listening to Dick's pictures of the gayeties of social life; the
"jolly times," as he expressed it, which she had never known.

Dr. Howe was reading, with an indignant exclamation occasionally, a
scathing review of an action of his political candidate, and his big
newspaper hid the two young people by the fire, so that he quite forgot
them. Max seemed to feel that the responsibility of propriety rested upon
him, and he sat with his head on Lois's knee, and his drowsy eyes
blinking at Mr. Forsythe. His mistress pulled his silky ears gently,
or knotted them behind his head, giving him a curiously astonished and
grieved look, as though he felt she trifled with his dignity; yet he did
not move his head, but watched, with no affection in his soft brown eyes,
the young man who talked so eagerly to Lois.

"That brute hates me," said Mr. Forsythe, "and yet I took the trouble to
bring him a biscuit to-day. Talk of gratitude and affection in animals.
They don't know what it means!"

"Max loves me," Lois answered, taking the setter's head between her
hands.

"Ah, well, that's different," cried Forsythe; "of course he does. I'd
like to know how he could help it. He wouldn't be fit to live, if he
didn't."

Lois raised the hand-screen she held, so that Dick could only see the
curls about her forehead and one small curve of her ear. "How hot the
fire is!" she said.

Dr. Howe folded his newspaper with much crackling and widely opened arms.
"Don't sit so near it. In my young days, the children were never allowed
to come any nearer the fireplace than the outside of the hearth-rug."
Then he began to read again, muttering, "Confound that reporter!"

Dick glanced at him, and then he said, in a low voice, "Max loves you
because you are so kind to him, Miss Lois; it is worth while to be a dog
to have you"--

"Give him bones?" Lois cried hurriedly. "Yes, it is too hot in here,
father; don't you think so; don't you wan