mutual natures and relations. She answered by a smile,
exceeding sweet and sparkling, as well as conscious, to the face that
was looking down at her with a little bit of provoking archness upon
its gravity; and their lips met in a long sealing kiss. Husband and
wife understood each other.

Perhaps Mr. Rhys knew it, for it seemed as if his lips could hardly
leave hers; and Eleanor's face was all manner of lights.

"What has become of Alfred?" he asked, in an irrelevant kind of manner,
by way of parenthesis.

"I have not seen him--hardly--since you left England. He is not under
mamma's care now."

"And my friend Julia? You have told me but a mite yet about everybody."

"Julia is your friend still. But Julia--I have not seen her in a long,
long time."

"How is that?"

"Mamma would not let me. O Mr. Rhys!--we have been kept apart. I could
not even see her when I came away."

"Why?"

"Mamma--she was afraid of my influence over her."

"Is it possible!"

"Julia was going on well--setting her face to do right. Now--I do not
know how it will be. Even our letters are overlooked."

"I need not ask how your mother is. I suppose she is trying to save one
of her daughters for the world."

Eleanor's thoughts swept a wide course in a few minutes; remembered
whose hand instrumentality had saved her from such a fate and had
striven for Julia. With a sigh that was part sorrow and part gratitude,
Eleanor laid her head softly on Mr. Rhys's shoulder. With such
tenderness as one gives to a child, and yet rarer, because deeper and
graver, she was made at home there.

"Don't you want to take a walk to the chapel?"

"O yes!"--But she was held fast still.

"And shall we give sister Balliol the pleasure of our company to tea,
as we come back?"

"If you please--if you like."

"I do not like it at all," said Mr. Rhys frankly--"but I suppose we
must."

"Think of finding the restraints of society even in Fiji!" said Eleanor
trying to laugh, as she brought her bonnet and they set out.

"You must find them everywhere--unless you live to please yourself;"
said Mr. Rhys, with his sweet grave look; and Eleanor was consoled.

The walk to the church was not very long, and she could have desired it
longer. The river shore, and the view on the other side, and the
village by which they passed, the trees and the vegetable gardens and
the odd thatched roofs--everything was pretty and new to Eleanor's
eyes. They passed all they had se