gs since, and she was greatly encouraged.
There is such a rage about the new style of papering. Everybody has run
mad on dados and friezes, and fresco patterns, bordering, and harmonies
of color," laughingly. "And they have some wonderful new designs."

"Fred is in just the right place. If he has courage to fight through,"
and there came a curious, almost foreboding expression in the
sympathetic eyes.

"You care a good deal for him, Jack! And yet he did not use you nobly,"
with a peculiar regret in the tone. "It is the one thing"--

"Sylvie, if I forgave it, surely you can." Then he turned his eyes upon
her, and read or rather dreamed of something in a dim, dazed way, the
story of a bygone summer. Had it been more to her than any one thought?
Miss Barry had hinted to his mother that Sylvie's decision in the matter
was a great disappointment to her. There had been a decision, then, and
one adverse to Fred Lawrence.

"I hate a false and cowardly man!" her cheeks were flaming now. "And
when you were schoolboys together,--when Agatha and Gertrude were so
afraid he would lower himself if he looked at any boy below his own
social position,--he used to stand up for you,--yes, he did,--and fight;
of course not in a brutal way with fists," and she laughed at her own
conceit, "but in that higher, finer manner, with no shield or weapon
save his love for you. I used to like to see you together,--you so
sturdy and manful and true, and he delicate and handsome and adoring.
And then"--

"Sylvie, I wonder if a woman can understand a man's friendship. We never
had any quarrel. We just drifted apart. I don't believe we forgot each
other. Circumstances took him out of my sphere, into a new one. If I had
been there in college, going along with him step by step, don't you
suppose he would have stood up for me in the face of his fine friends,
just as he used to with his sisters?"

"I hope so: I would like to believe it."

"I am more just to him than you, Sylvie," said Jack, a little wounded.
"I _know_ it. I don't doubt it any more than I doubt--well, myself. He
might have come--I was always sorry to see him avoid me, and I think he
was weak, but he never forgot."

"He _was_ weak, he was worse, Jack." There was a curious cry of anguish
in her voice, and her shoulders swayed unconsciously, while her eyes
looked out on the summer night he could not see.

"Don't get so excited over it, Sylvie," and the pleasant, cheery laugh
seemed to