"Perhaps I ask too much, but it is this: may I keep your
glove?"

She nodded her head; she was so touched that she could scarcely trust
herself to speak. "But you will soon get over this," she said at last;
"another glove will take the place of mine; the time will come when
you will be glad that I said I could not marry you."

"Grizel!" he cried in agony. He was so carried away by his feelings
that he said the word aloud.

"Where?" asked Elspeth, looking at the window.

"Was it not she who passed just now?" he replied promptly; and they
were still discussing his mistake when Grizel did pass, but only to
stop at the door. She came in.

"My brother must have the second sight," declared Elspeth, gaily, "for
he saw you coming before you came"; and she told what had happened,
while Grizel looked happily at Tommy, and Tommy looked apprehensively
at her. Grizel, he might have seen, was not wearing the tragic face of
sacrifice; it was a face shining with gladness, a girl still too happy
in his nobility to think remorsefully of her own misdeeds. To let him
know that she was proud of him, that was what she had come for
chiefly, and she was even glad that Elspeth was there to hear. It was
an excuse to her to repeat Corp's story, and she told it with defiant
looks at Tommy that said, "You are so modest, you want to stop me, but
Elspeth will listen; it is nearly as sweet to Elspeth as it is to me,
and I shall tell her every word, yes, and tell her a great deal of it
twice."

It was not modesty which made Tommy so anxious that she should think
less of him, but naturally it had that appearance. The most heroic
fellows, I am told, can endure being extolled by pretty girls, but
here seemed to be one who could not stand it.

"You need not think it is of you we are proud," she assured him
light-heartedly; "it is really of ourselves. I am proud of being your
friend. To-morrow, when I hear the town ringing your praises, I shall
not say, 'Yes, isn't he wonderful?' I shall say, 'Talk of me; I, too,
am an object of interest, for I am his friend.'"

"I have often been pointed out as his sister," said Elspeth,
complacently.

"He did not choose his sister," replied Grizel, "but he chose his
friends."

For a time he could suck no sweetness from it. She avoided the glove,
he was sure, only because of Elspeth's presence. But anon there
arrived to cheer him a fond hope that she had not heard of it, and as
this became conviction, exit t