time
with less prosperity than the last. Then I give it up. I must trust to
Providence.

As the time for her coming draws nigh, I fall to thinking of the
different occasions since my marriage, on which I have watched for
expected comings from this window--have searched that bend in the drive
with impatient eyes--and of the disappointment to which, on the two
occasions that rise most prominently before my mind's eye, I became a
prey.

Well, I am to be subject to no disappointment--if it _would_ be a
disappointment--to-day.

Almost before I expect her--almost before she is due--she is here in the
room with me, and we are looking at one another. I, indeed, am staring
at her with a black and stupid surprise.

"Good Heavens!" say I, bluntly; "what _have_ you been doing to yourself?
_how_ happy you look!"

I have always known theoretically that happiness was becoming; and I
have always thought Barbara most fair.

"Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,
Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed,"

but _now_, what a lovely brightness, like that of clouds remembering the
gone sun, shines all about her! What a radiant laughter in her eyes!
What a splendid carnation on her cheeks! (How glad I am that I did not
tell!)

"Do I?" she says, softly, and hiding her face, with the action of a shy
child, on my shoulders. "I dare say."

"_Good_ Heavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before,
and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation.

"And _you_?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful
confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "and _you_? you are
pleased too, are not you?"

"Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and
the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the
forenoon, "_delighted_! I never was so pleased in my life. I told you so
in my letters, did not I?"

A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment.

"Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again. I thought
that you--would have such a--such a great deal to say about it."

"So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a
paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will
bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is--it is difficult
to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself,
was I?"

We have sa