ving
behaved very ill to some one before he married Lady Alexandra De
Courcy. He stopped his horse also, falling a little behind Lily,
so that he might not be supposed to have seen her tears, and began
to hum a tune. Emily also, though not wickedly clever, understood
something of it. "If Bernard says anything to make you angry, I will
scold him," she said. Then the two girls rode on together in front,
while Bernard fell back with Siph Dunn.

"Pratt," said Crosbie, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder as
soon as the party had ridden out of hearing, "do you see that girl
there in the dark blue habit?"

"What, the one nearest to the path?"

"Yes; the one nearest to the path. That is Lily Dale."

"Lily Dale!" said Fowler Pratt.

"Yes; that is Lily Dale."

"Did you speak to her?" Pratt asked.

"No; she gave me no chance. She was there but a moment. But it was
herself. It seems so odd to me that I should have been thus so near
her again." If there was any man to whom Crosbie could have spoken
freely about Lily Dale it was this man, Fowler Pratt. Pratt was the
oldest friend he had in the world, and it had happened that when he
first woke to the misery that he had prepared for himself in throwing
over Lily and betrothing himself to his late wife, Pratt had been the
first person to whom he had communicated his sorrow. Not that he had
ever been really open in his communications. It was not given to such
men as Crosbie to speak openly of themselves to their friends. Nor,
indeed, was Fowler Pratt one who was fond of listening to such tales.
He had no such tales to tell of himself, and he thought that men and
women should go through the world quietly, not subjecting themselves
or their acquaintances to anxieties and emotions from peculiar
conduct. But he was conscientious, and courageous also as well as
prudent, and he had dared to tell Crosbie that he was behaving very
badly. He had spoken his mind plainly, and had then given all the
assistance in his power.

He paused a moment before he replied, weighing, like a prudent man,
the force of the words he was about to utter. "It is much better as
it is," he said. "It is much better that you should be as strangers
for the future."

"I do not see that at all," said Crosbie. They were both leaning on
the rails, and so they remained for the next twenty minutes. "I do
not see that at all."

"I feel sure of it. What could come of any renewed intercourse,--even
if she woul