enelope's voice comes to her from the
other end of the room, with a plaintive ring in it. It casts despair
upon the hopes that are kindling afresh within her bosom. "Dear, dear!
I'm so glad! Monica, come to me, and help me with this wool. It has got
so entangled that only bright eyes like yours," with a loving smile,
"can rescue it from its hopeless state."

Poor Monica! after one passionate inclination to rebel, her courage
fails her, and she gives in, and taking the tangled skein of wool (that
reminds her in a vague, sorrowful fashion of her own hapless love story)
between her slender fingers, bends over it.

Her cheeks are aflame. Her eyes are miserable but tearless. It all seems
too cruel. There sits Aunt Priscilla at the davenport, with a smile of
triumph on her lips, as she finds her accounts right to a halfpenny.
Here sits Aunt Penelope fanning herself with soft complacency, because
the day, though of September, is sultry as of hot July. And all this
time Brian is walking impatiently to and fro upon the tiny beach,
thinking her cold, unloving, indifferent, watching with straining,
reproachful eyes the path along which she ought to come.

This last thought is just too much. A great fire kindles in her
beautiful eyes; the spirit of defiance seizes on her gentle breast; her
lips quiver; her breath comes from between them with a panting haste.
"Yes! she will go to him, she will!" She rises to her feet.

Just at that moment the door is flung wide open, and Desmond enters the
room.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

How the Misses Blake receive the nephew of their sworn foe--How
Monica at all hazards proclaims her truth--And how Miss Priscilla
sees something that upsets her and the belief of years.

One moment of coma ensues. It is an awful moment, in which nobody seems
even to breathe. The two Misses Blake turn into a rigidity that might
mean stone; the young man pauses irresolutely, yet with a sternness
about his lips that bespeaks a settled purpose not to be laid aside for
any reason, and that adds some years to his age.

Monica has turned to him. The tangled wool has fallen unconsciously from
her hands to her feet. Her lips are parted, her eyes wide: she sways a
little. Then a soft rapturous cry breaks from her, there is a
simultaneous movement on his part and on hers; and then--she is in his
arms.

For a few moments speech is impossible to them: there seems nothing in
the wide world but he to her, and she