e times when he was quite crushed by it.

"If there was any hope of a better day coming," he said to Aimee, who,
through being the family sage, was, of course, the family confidante,
"if there was only something real to look forward to, but we are just
where we were three years ago, and this sort of thing cannot go on
forever. What right have I to hold her to her word when other men might
make her happier?"

Ainice, sitting on a stool at his feet and looking reflective, shook her
head.

"That is not a right view to take," she said, "and it is n't fair to
Dolly. Dolly would be happier with you on a pound a week than she would
be with any one else on ten thousand a year. And you ought to know that
by this time, Griffith. It is n't a question of happiness at all."

"I don't mean--" he was beginning, but Aimee interrupted him. Her part of
this love affair was to lay plans for the benefit of the lovers and to
endeavor to settle their little difficulties in her own way.

"I am very fond of Dolly," she said.

"Fond of her!" echoed Griffith. "So am I. Who isn't?"

"I am very fond of Dolly," Aimee proceeded.

"And _I_ know her as other people do not, perhaps. She does not show as
much of her real self to outsiders as they think. I have often thought
her daring, open way deceived people when it made them fancy she was so
easy to read. She has romantic fancies of her own the world never
suspects her of,--if I did not know her as I do, she is the last person
on earth I should suspect of cherishing such fancies. The fact is, you
are a sort of romance to her, and her love for you is one of her dreams,
and she clings to it as closely as she would cling to life. It is a
dream she has lived on so long that it has become part of herself, and
it is my impression that if anything happened to break her belief in it
she would die,--yes, _die!_" with another emphatic shake of the pretty
head. "And Dolly is n't the sort of girl to die for nothing."

Griffith raised his bowed head from his hands, his soft, dark, womanish
eyes lighting up and his sallow young face flushing. "God bless
her,--no!" he said. "Her life has not been free from thorns, even so
far, and she has not often cried out against them."

"No," answered Aimee. "And when the roses come, no one will see as you
will how sweet she finds them. Your Dolly is n't Lady Augusta's Dolly,
or Mollie's, or Ralph Gowan's, or even mine; she is the Dolly no one but
her lover and her h