am very happy, Donald."

"Philip is a splendid fellow."

"You wanted me to ... to marry him, Don?"

"I _wanted_ you to?" He barely succeeded in checking, unspoken, the
burning words on his tongue; but this time his voice betrayed him, and,
if he had not been resolutely keeping his face turned away from her, he
might have seen, even in that dim light, an odd change come into the
expression of her lovely face, and seen a wonderfully tender and
somewhat mischievous smile touch her lips. All that he did know,
however, was that she gave a low, happy laugh, which was like a
knife-thrust to his soul.

"Don," she said at length, "I have told no one else of my great secret
yet, for I wanted to tell you, first of all. I couldn't go to sleep
without telling you, for you have been such a dear confidant and father
confessor to me that it seems as though I must tell you everything. I
... I've just got to tell you what has happened. May I?"

The man barely smothered a groan. Must he hear this girl, in her
simplicity, talk on and on about the man she loved, and had promised to
marry? It struck him, too, as strange that she should be willing to lay
bare anything so sacred in a woman's life, but then she was her natural
self, and quite different from most girls, in her attitude toward him.

But Rose was speaking quietly, and as though to herself, "Philip has
been so sweet and good to me while you were away. You remember that you,
yourself, told me that you meant him to take your place as my unofficial
protector, and that I should go to him with my perplexities. It would
have been better for me if I had followed your advice closer, but now I
can laugh at spilt milk."

Rose had already confessed to Donald about her "investment" and been by
him cross-examined into an admission of her little charities, which, in
their aggregate, had so nearly wiped out her bank account. She could
laugh about them now, for she had won to her goal, and already begun to
earn a livelihood, but she had carefully hidden in her heart the story
of the bitter struggle in which she had engaged to make both ends meet
during the last few months of her course, when her mysterious refusals
to accept any invitations from Ethel, Miss Merriman or Philip for her
free afternoons and evenings, had left them wondering what on earth she
was doing. No one guessed that they were spent in earning the few sadly
needed dollars which her pride forbade her to borrow from any of t