cy."

"You don't ask me anything."

"Perhaps, dear, because there is nothing I want to know."

"Then you _do_ guess?"

"Oh, yes, dear, I do guess."

"Well--but what?"

"I suppose--that you are--engaged to Mr. Heron."

Lucy started up with her face all on fire.

"Oh, no, Nola, dear darling! you have guessed too much. I wish I had
told you, and not asked you to guess at all. We're not engaged. Oh, no.
It's only--well, it's only--it's only that I am in love with him,
Nola--oh, yes, so much in love with him that I should not like to live
if he didn't care about me--no, not one day!" Then Lucy hid her head in
Minola's lap and sobbed like a little child.

Perhaps the breakdown was of service to both the girls. It allowed poor
Lucy to relieve her long pent-up feelings, and it gave Minola time to
consider the meaning of the revelation as composedly as she could, and
to think of what she ought to say and do.

Lucy presently looked up, with a gleam of April brightness in her eyes.

"Do you think me foolish, Nola, for telling you this?"

"Well, dear, I don't know whether you ought to have told it to me."

"I couldn't do without telling it to somebody, Nola. I think I must be
like that king I read about somewhere--I forget his name; no, I believe
it was not the king, but his servant--who had to tell the secret to some
listener, and so told it to the reeds on the seashore. If I had not told
this to somebody, I must have told it to the reeds."

Minola almost wished she had told it to the reeds. There were reeds
enough beneath the little bridge which Nola loved in Regent's Park, and
had they been possessed of the secret she might have looked over the
bridge for ever, and dreamed dreams as the lazy water flowed on beneath,
and even noted and admired the whispering reeds, and they would never
have whispered that secret to her.

"I think papa guesses it," Lucy said. "I am sure he does, because he
talked to me of--oh, well, of a different person, and asked me if I
cared about him, and I told him that I didn't. He said he was glad, for
he didn't much like him; but that I should marry any one I liked--always
provided, Nola, that he happened to like me, which doesn't at all
follow. I know papa likes Mr. Heron."

"Then, Lucy, would it not be better to tell Mr. Money?"

"Oh, Nola! I couldn't tell him that--I could tell him almost anything,
but I couldn't tell him that. Are you not sorry for me, Nola? Oh, say
you are sorry