must think me unworthy
of the honor it was in her sweet will to bestow." Then he remembered
that she was now always at home. "Not another hour of foolish
indecision!" he whispered to himself. "I will put my destiny to the
test. I will see her today!"

A middle-aged, plain-faced servant answered his ring at the door-bell
of the Madden mansion. She was palpably Irish, and looked at him with a
saddened preoccupation in her gray eyes, holding the door only a little
ajar.

Theron had got out one of his cards. "I wish to make inquiry about
young Mr. Madden--Mr. Michael Madden," he said, holding the card forth
tentatively. "I have only just heard of his illness, and it has been a
great grief to me."

"He is no better," answered the woman, briefly.

"I am the Rev. Mr. Ware," he went on, "and you may say that, if he is
well enough, I should be glad to see him."

The servant peered out at him with a suddenly altered expression, then
shook her head. "I don't think he would be wishing to see YOU," she
replied. It was evident from her tone that she suspected the visitor's
intentions.

Theron smiled in spite of himself. "I have not come as a clergyman," he
explained, "but as a friend of the family. If you will tell Miss Madden
that I am here, it will do just as well. Yes, we won't bother him. If
you will kindly hand my card to his sister."

When the domestic turned at this and went in, Theron felt like throwing
his hat in the air, there where he stood. The woman's churlish sectarian
prejudices had played ideally into his hands. In no other imaginable way
could he have asked for Celia so naturally. He wondered a little that a
servant at such a grand house as this should leave callers standing on
the doorstep. Still more he wondered what he should say to the lady of
his dream when he came into her presence.

"Will you please to walk this way?" The woman had returned. She closed
the door noiselessly behind him, and led the way, not up the sumptuous
staircase, as Theron had expected, but along through the broad hall,
past several large doors, to a small curtained archway at the end.
She pushed aside this curtain, and Theron found himself in a sort of
conservatory, full of the hot, vague light of sunshine falling through
ground-glass. The air was moist and close, and heavy with the smell of
verdure and wet earth. A tall bank of palms, with ferns sprawling at
their base, reared itself directly in front of him. The floor was of