ady, Miss Bourdon? Are you not that now?" Miss Bourdon shook her
head mournfully.

"Of course not, only a little stupid country girl, a farmer's niece. Oh!
to be a lady--beautiful and haughty and admired, to go to balls in
diamonds and laces, to go to the opera like a queen, to lead the
fashion, and to be worshipped by every one one met! But what is the use
of wishing, it never, never, never, can be."

"Can it not? I don't quite see that, although the ladies you are
thinking of exist in novels only, never in this prosy, work-a-day world.
Wealth is not happiness--a worn-out aphorism, but true now as the first
day it was uttered. Great wealth, perhaps, may never come to you but
what may seem wealth in your eyes may be nearer than you think--who
knows?"

He looked at her, a sudden flush rising over his face, but Norine shook
her black ringlets soberly.

"No, I will never be rich. Uncle Reuben won't hear of my going out as
governess, so there is nothing left but to go on with the
chicken-feeding and butter-making and novel-reading forever. Perhaps it
is ungrateful, though, to desire any change, for I am happy too."

He drew a little nearer her; a light in his grave eyes, a glow on his
sober face, warm words on his lips. What was Richard Gilbert about to
say? The young, sweet, wistful face was fair enough in that tender
light, to turn the head of even a thirty-five year-old-lawyer. But those
impulsive words were not spoken, for "Norry, Norry!" piped Aunt Hester's
shrill treble. "Where's that child gone? Doesn't she know she'll get her
death out there in the evening air."

Norine laughed.

"From romance to reality! Aunt Hester doesn't believe in moonlight and
star-gazing and foolish longings for the impossible. Perhaps she is
right; but I wonder if she didn't stop to look at the moon sometimes,
too, when she was seventeen?"

It was a very fair opening, given in all innocence. But Mr. Gilbert did
not avail himself of it. He was not a "lady's man" in any sense of the
word. Up to the present he had never given the fairest, the cleverest
among them a second glance, a second thought. The language of compliment
and flirtation was as Chaldaic and Sanscrit to him, and he walked by her
side up to the house and into the keeping-room in ignoble silence.

The little old maid and the big old bachelors were assembled here, the
lamp was lit, the curtains down and the silvery shimmer of that lovely
moon-rise jealously shut out. No