ll, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry--
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun.

"What a being Burns was!" interrupted John, without looking up. "How
precisely he knew my feelings toward any one who would show me how to
escape this checkmate!" And Lilian sprang to her feet, upsetting her
workbasket, and ran to him and commenced talking hurriedly, while Mr.
Reyburn, whose eyes had been resting on her face for some time, kept
on singing after Helen ceased--

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun.

And Helen, child as she was, looking at him and listening to him,
recognized a veiled meaning in the tone of the singing, and thought
she hated the singer.

That night, when all the others had gone, and Lilian's mother was
folding her work, and John was locking a window, and Helen closing the
piano, she saw Mr. Reyburn stoop over Lilian's hand as he said
good-night--stoop low, and press his lips upon its dimpled back. In
after years Helen might recall his manner of that moment and
understand it, half reverence, half passion, as it was, but now she
only saw Lilian turn white and tremble, and clasp her hand over her
eyes in a bewildered way when he had gone to his rooms on the other
side of the hall, and walk up stairs as though she feared to rouse an
echo.

"Oh, Lilian," said Helen, following her into her mother's room, "how
dared he kiss your hand? How dared he look at you so while he sang? I
hate him!"

"Hush, child," said Lilian gently, almost solemnly. And Helen,
remembering who Lilian was, and the deep friendship between her
brother and the other, felt as if she had committed an unpardonable
sin, and crept away to bed, and did not see the man again during the
short remainder of her stay.

But Lilian saw him often. Perhaps she never went out without seeing
him, perhaps she never remained at home that he did not come in: going
by the parlor-door half a dozen times a day, nothing was easier. In
fact, few men have friends who think it worth their while to pay such
attentions to another's chosen wife as this friend of John's did.
To-day he gave flowers and helped her heap them in the vases; on the
morrow he brought in for inspection a borrowed portfolio of the
wonderful water--colors that some mad artist had dashed off among the
painted canons, or brought perhaps the artist himself; when he was
absent he wrote her letters, sent to John's care in