as ever; but, Lauderdale, upon my soul, I don't want to do anything
wrong, if I can help it. If it is _kismit_, as the Turks say, my
fate, what can I do? What will be, will be; if auburn ringlets and
yellow-brown eyes are my destiny, what am I--the descendant of many
Stanfords--that I should resist? Nevertheless, if destiny minds its
own business and lets me alone, I'll come up to the mark like a
man. Kate is glorious; I always knew it, but never so much as now.
Something has happened recently--no matter what--that has elevated
her higher than ever in my estimation. There is something grand
about the girl--something too great and noble in that high-strung
nature of hers, for such a reprobate as I! This is _entre nous_,
though; if I tell you I am a reprobate, it is in confidence. I am a
lucky fellow, am I not, to have two of earth's angels to choose
from? And yet sometimes I wish I were not so lucky; I don't want to
misbehave--I don't want to break anybody's heart; but still--"

It came to an end as abruptly as it had begun. Rose's cheeks were
scarlet flame before she concluded. She understood it all. He was bound
to her sister; he was trying to be true, but he loved her! Had he not
owned it--might she not still hope? She clasped her hands in sudden,
ecstatic rapture.

"He loves me best," she thought; "and the one he loves best will be the
one he will choose."

She folded up the precious document, and hid it in her pocket. She
looked up at the window, but no more sheets of the unfinished letter
fluttered out.

"Careless fellow!" she thought, "to leave such tell-tale letters loose.
If Kate had found it, or Grace, or Eeny! They could not help
understanding it. I wish I dared tell him; but I can't."

She turned and went into the house. No more dreary rambles round the
fish-pond. Rose was happy again.

Suicide was indefinitely postponed, and Kate might become the nun, not
she. Kate was his promised wife; but there is many a slip; and the
second Miss Danton ran up to her room, singing, "New hope may bloom."

If Rose's heart had been broken, she would have dressed herself
carefully all the same. There was to be a dinner-party at the house that
evening, and among the guests a viscount recently come over to shoot
moose. The viscount was forty, but unmarried, with a long rent-roll, and
longer pedigree; and who knew what effect sparkling hazel eyes and