its tiny oval, and to her it took a double significance as
her husband held it there, claiming her again, with that emphatic
"Mine." She did not speak, but something in her manner caused the fold
between his brows to smooth itself away as he regarded the small hand
lying passively in his, and said, half playfully, half earnestly--

"Forgive me if I hurt you, but you know my wooing is not over yet; and
till you love me with a perfect love I cannot feel that my wife is
wholly mine."

"I am so young, you know; when I am a woman grown I can give you a
woman's love; now it is a girl's, you say. Wait for me, Geoffrey, a
little longer, for indeed I do my best to be all you would have me."

Something brought tears into her eyes and made her lips tremble, but in
a breath the smile came back, and she added gayly--

"How can I help being grave sometimes, and getting thin, with so many
housekeeping cares upon my shoulders, and such an exacting, tyrannical
husband to wear upon my nerves. Don't I look like the most miserable of
wives?"

She did not certainly as she shook the popper laughingly, and looked
over her shoulder at him, with the bloom of fire-light on her cheeks,
its cheerfulness in her eyes.

"Keep that expression for every day wear, and I am satisfied. I want no
tame Griselda, but the little girl who once said she was always happy
with me. Assure me of that, and, having won my Leah, I can work and wait
still longer for my Rachel. Bless the baby! what has she done to herself
now?"

Tilly had retired behind the sofa, after she had swarmed over every
chair and couch, examined everything within her reach, on _etagere_ and
table, embraced the Hebe in the corner, played a fantasia on the piano,
and choked herself with the stopper of the odor bottle. A doleful wail
betrayed her hiding place, and she now emerged with a pair of
nutcrackers, ditto of pinched fingers, and an expression of great mental
and bodily distress. Her woes vanished instantaneously, however, when
the feast was announced, and she performed an unsteady _pas seul_ about
the banquet, varied by skirmishes with her long night-gown and darts at
any unguarded viand that tempted her.

No ordinary table service would suit the holders of this fireside
_fete_. The corn was heaped in a bronze urn, the nuts in a graceful
basket, the apples lay on a plate of curiously ancient china, and the
water turned to wine through the medium of a purple flagon of Bohemian
gl