l!" cried Evadne, "if Miss
Chillingworth were willing. But the house is not large enough, Doctor
Randolph, we shall need three or four guest chambers, you know."

"Nothing easier than to build an addition," said John, with the quiet
reserve of power which always made his patients believe in the
impossible.

Evadne laid her hand upon Miss Chillingworth's--"Dear Miss Diana," she
said gently, "you do not say 'No' to us; do you think you could ever
find it in your heart to say 'Yes'? I know it must seem a terrible
innovation, but we could never have imagined anything half so
delightful, Aunt Marthe and I. The atmosphere--outdoors and in--is
perfection!"

Miss Diana looked at the sparkling face and then at Mrs. Everidge with
her gentle smile. "I find myself _very_ glad," she said, "since I have
to lose my boys, but do you think we had better make any definite plans,
dear, until we have talked it over with the Lord?"

And John Randolph said to Evadne with eyes that were suspiciously
bright; "It is impossible for anyone to get very far from the Kingdom,
when they live with our Lady Di."

The talk had wandered then to different subjects, and John Randolph
listened to the soft play of Evadne's fancy and watched the light in
her wonderful eyes. Her nature, so long repressed in an uncongenial
environment, in this new soil of love and sympathy was blossoming richly
and he found her very fair. He had rarely seen her resting. Now the
shapely hands were folded together in a beautiful stillness--and then
the breeze had waved aside a flower, and a sunbeam, darting through the
trellis, fell upon the stone in her ring and made it sparkle with a
baleful fire!

"Poor Louis!" Isabelle had said, the last time he had been called to
prescribe for her frequently recurring attacks of indisposition, "he
will have to wait for promotion now before he can think of marriage. It
is very hard for him."

So again the truth and the lie had mingled.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Very sweet grew the life at 'The Willows' and Mrs. Everidge and Evadne
and Miss Diana found their hands full of happy work.

Unavella still reigned supreme in her kitchen. "'Tain't a great sight
harder to cook for a dozen than six," she had remarked sententiously,
when the plan was unfolded to her, "it's only a matter uv quantity, the
quality's jest the same. Ef Miss Di-an's a'goin ter start in ter be a
she Atlas an' carry the world on her shoulders, she'll find I'm
warrante