le lit up
his face. "I _had_ no right to ask that question, but I shall endeavor to
find it out all the same," a glow of satisfaction filling his heart.

Gussie entered at this moment and Dexie escaped to her room, but Guy did
not think his case quite hopeless as he walked home, thinking it over.

"I believe she does care for me; but shall I ever be able to make her
confess it? She must know how I love her. However, I feel free to go to the
house as usual, and I may not, after all, repeat the moth-and-candle story,
as I feared."

But try as he would, he could not break through the reserve that now
surrounded Dexie like a mantle. She welcomed him with the fewest possible
words when he called on Mr. Sherwood, and she seemed so cool and stiff that
he felt chilled to the heart. It was seldom, indeed, that she addressed a
remark to him during an evening. Yet there were times when, suddenly
turning his eyes in her direction, he would find her looking at him so
intently that his heart would throb with hope and gladness, only to be
chilled again at the first word that fell from her lips. For weeks this
battle with hope and fear went on, and their friendly intercourse seemed to
have come to an end. Her visits to the T. and B. rooms were fewer than
ever, and the hour for choir practice was so often changed that he found it
almost impossible to see her a moment alone. His visits to the house gave
him little pleasure. Mr. Sherwood always brightened up when he arrived, and
but for the pleasure these visits gave to the sick man Guy would have
hesitated about making them at all.

One evening as he entered the parlor he found the family assembled and busy
over various trifles: Gussie, with a basket of colored wools, was picking
out some needed shade; Mrs. Sherwood was by the fire with some fleecy
knitting work in her hands, while Flossie sat at her feet intent on fitting
a brilliant dress on her newest doll.

Traverse stood in the doorway looking at the family group for some moments
until Dexie, who was reading the evening paper to her father, lifted her
eyes and acknowledged his presence with a bow. She perused the paper
silently, while her father and Mr. Traverse entered into a discussion
concerning certain charges made in it against one of the public officers of
the State, and at her father's request Dexie read again the article that
had called forth the discussion.

When she had finished she lifted her eyes, and a wave of colo