fternoon and evening would have to be given to the family, he had asked
Anna to devote an early hour to the final consideration of their plans.
He was to meet her in the brown sitting-room at ten, and they were to
walk down to the river and talk over their future in the little pavilion
abutting on the wall of the park.

It was just a week since his arrival at Givre, and Anna wished, before
he left, to return to the place where they had sat on their first
afternoon together. Her sensitiveness to the appeal of inanimate things,
to the colour and texture of whatever wove itself into the substance of
her emotion, made her want to hear Darrow's voice, and to feel his eyes
on her, in the spot where bliss had first flowed into her heart.

That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every fold of her
being. Passing, in the first days, from a high shy tenderness to the
rush of a secret surrender, it had gradually widened and deepened, to
flow on in redoubled beauty. She thought she now knew exactly how and
why she loved Darrow, and she could see her whole sky reflected in the
deep and tranquil current of her love.

Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing through the
letters which it was Effie's morning privilege to carry up to her. Effie
meanwhile circled inquisitively about the room, where there was always
something new to engage her infant fancy; and Anna, looking up, saw her
suddenly arrested before a photograph of Darrow which, the day before,
had taken its place on the writing-table.

Anna held out her arms with a faint blush. "You do like him, don't you,
dear?"

"Oh, most awfully, dearest," Effie, against her breast, leaned back
to assure her with a limpid look. "And so do Granny and Owen--and I DO
think Sophy does too," she added, after a moment's earnest pondering.

"I hope so," Anna laughed. She checked the impulse to continue: "Has she
talked to you about him, that you're so sure?" She did not know what had
made the question spring to her lips, but she was glad she had closed
them before pronouncing it. Nothing could have been more distasteful to
her than to clear up such obscurities by turning on them the tiny flame
of her daughter's observation. And what, after all, now that Owen's
happiness was secured, did it matter if there were certain reserves in
Darrow's approval of his marriage?

A knock on the door made Anna glance at the clock. "There's Nurse to
carry you off."

"It's Sophy'