ng her.

"No, the years have not been thrown away! If I live to grow old I shall
still count them the best years of my life," said she with a pathetic
resignation. "I may have been sometimes out of spirits, but much oftener
I have been happy; what other joy have I ever had than Cecil's love? I
was eighteen when we met at that ball--you remember, Nell! Dear Cecil! I
adored him from the first kind word he gave me, and what a thrill I felt
to-day when I saw him coming!"

"And he is to come no more?" inquired Helen softly.

"No more as of old. Of course we shall see one another as people do who
live in the same world: I am not going into a nunnery. Cecil will be a
great man some day, and I shall recollect with pride that for six years
he loved only _me_. He did not mention Mr. Brotherton: I think he has
heard, but if not, he will hear soon enough from other people. If we
were not so awfully poor, Nell, or if poverty were not so dreadful to
mamma, I _never_ would marry--_never_ while Cecil is a bachelor."

This was how Julia Gardiner announced that she meant to succumb to the
pressure of circumstances. Helen kissed her thankfully. She had been
very anxious for this consummation. It would be a substantial, permanent
benefit to them all if Julia married Mr. Brotherton. He had said that it
should be so, and he was a gentleman of good estate, and as generous as
he was wealthy, though very middle-aged, a widower with six children,
and as a lover not interesting perhaps.

Mr. Cecil Burleigh also sat at an open window, but he was not provided
with a confessor, only with a cigar. He had dined, and did not feel so
intensely miserable as he felt an hour ago. "Dear little Julia!" He
thought of her with caressing tenderness, her pretty looks, her graceful
ways, her sweet affection. "There were tears in her dove's eyes when she
said 'Good-bye, Cecil, good-bye, dear!'" No other woman would ever have
his heart.

They had both good sense, and did not rail at evil fortune. It had done
neither any mischief to be absorbed in love of the other through the
most passionate years of their lives. Mrs. Gardiner had remonstrated
often and kindly against their folly, but had put no decisive _veto_ on
it, in the hope that they would grow out it. And, in a manner, they had
grown out of it. Six years ago, if they had been allowed, they would
have married without counting the cost; but those six years had brought
them experience of the world, of the