ndon friends?" asked John, looking at me, but talking to
her.

"Oh, Mr. and Miss Tyrrell, a pretty lady with long feathers and
ringlets, and flounces on her dress, and a handsome gentleman who said
they had missed Margery dreadfully. And Margery is thinking of going
back to them."

John suddenly stopped stroking her, and sat quite still. I felt him
looking at me earnestly, and at last I had to look up, which I did
smiling, and saying, "I did not know Mopsie cared so much about me."

Then John kissed the little girl, and said, "Go down-stairs to Jane,
dear. I have something particular to say to Margery."

I was completely taken by surprise. He closed the door upon Mopsie, and
came back and reseated himself at the fire. He sat on one side of the
fireplace, and I at the other, and the flames danced between us. He
shaded his face with his hand, and looked across at me; and I watched
intently a great tree falling in the depths of a burning forest among
the embers.

"Is this true, Margery," said John, "that you are going to leave us, and
return to London?"

"I am thinking of it," I said pleasantly.

"I thought--I had hoped you were happy with us," he said.

"Yes," I said, "I have been very happy, but I think I want a little
change."

How my heart ached with the effort of uttering that untruth! I knew that
I wanted no change.

"I do not wonder at it," he said after a pause. "We have made a slave of
you. You are tired of it, and you are going away."

He said this bitterly and sorrowfully, shading his eyes still more with
his hand.

"No, no," I said, "you must not say that. I never was so happy in my
life as I have been here."

I spoke more eagerly than I meant to do, and my voice broke a little in
spite of me. John left his seat and bent down beside me, so that he
could see my face, which could not escape him.

"Margery," said he, "I have seen that you have made yourself happy, and
I have been sometimes wild enough to hope that you would be content to
spend your life amongst us. When you came first I feared to love you too
well, but your sweet face and your sweet ways have been too much for me.
It may be ungenerous in me to speak, seeing that I only have to offer
you a true love, truer maybe than you will meet with in the gay world, a
tarnished name, and a very humble home. I have debts to pay, and a soil
to wash off my name; but still, Margery, will you be my wife? With your
love nothing will be dark or diff