he laughed. "I am thinking more of you Lennox, than of myself.
Suppose your father should not forgive you, cut you off without a cent,
and you should have to drudge all your life with mother and me on your
hands! Don't you think you would wish we had never met, or, at least,
that I had thought of these things?"

"Suppose the sky should fall, or the sun should go out, or that I could
stop loving you, or any of the impossible things that could not happen
once in a million years. Aren't you ashamed of yourself to doubt me in
this way? Answer me, miss," he said with mock ferocity.

For answer she laid her cheek against his.--"I am so happy, dear, that
I am almost afraid."

He pressed her tenderly. "And now, darling, for the
conspiracy--Cupid's conspiracy. You write to your mother to-night and
say that you will be home on Wednesday because you will. Then tell
Mrs. Tremont that you have had a wire from her saying you must go home
Friday (I'll see that you _do_ receive such a telegram), and leave
Friday morning by the 9:40. I will keep out of the way, because the
entire Tremont contingent will doubtless see you off. I will then meet
you at one of the stations near Boston. I can't tell you which, till I
hear from my friend, the Reverend John Langdon. He will have
everything arranged."

She looked at him with dilating eyes, her cheeks blanched with fear.

"Anna," he said, almost roughly, "if you have no confidence in me, I
will go out of your life forever."

"Yes, yes, I believe in you," she said. "It isn't that, but it is the
first thing I have ever kept from mother, and I would feel so much more
comfortable if she knew."

"Baby. An' so de ittle baby must tell its muvver ev'yting," he
mimicked her, till she felt ashamed of her good impulse--an impulse
which if she had yielded to, it would have saved her from all the
bitterness she was to know.

"And so you will do as I ask you, darling?"

"Yes."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes," and they sealed the bargain with a kiss.

"Dearest, I must be going. It would never do for Mrs. Tremont to see
us together. I should forget and call you pet names, and then you
would be sent supperless to bed, like the little girls in the story
books."

"I suppose you must go," she said, regretfully.

"It will not be for long," and with another kiss he left her.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOCK MARRIAGE.

"Thus grief still treads upon the heel of pleasure,
Married in ha