o much better."

"The deuce he might! How, I should like to know?"

"I'm afraid to tell you. I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Will you promise
not to laugh at me?"

"Anything to please you, my dear. Yes: I promise. Now, then, out with
it! How might Frank do better?"

"He might marry Me."

If the summer scene which then spread before Mr. Vanstone's eyes had
suddenly changed to a dreary winter view--if the trees had lost all
their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with snow in an
instant--his face could hardly have expressed greater amazement than
it displayed when his daughter's faltering voice spoke those four
last words. He tried to look at her--but she steadily refused him the
opportunity: she kept her face hidden over his shoulder. Was she in
earnest? His cheek, still wet with her tears, answered for her. There
was a long pause of silence; she waited--with unaccustomed patience, she
waited for him to speak. He roused himself, and spoke these words only:
"You surprise me, Magdalen; you surprise me more than I can say."

At the altered tone of his voice--altered to a quiet, fatherly
seriousness--Magdalen's arms clung round him closer than before.

"Have I disappointed you, papa?" she asked, faintly. "Don't say I have
disappointed you! Who am I to tell my secret to, if not to you? Don't
let him go--don't! don't! You will break his heart. He is afraid to tell
his father; he is even afraid _you_ might be angry with him. There is
nobody to speak for us, except--except me. Oh, don't let him go! Don't
for his sake--" she whispered the next words in a kiss--"Don't for
Mine!"

Her father's kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair head
tenderly. "Hush, my love," he said, almost in a whisper; "hush!" She
little knew what a revelation every word, every action that escaped her,
now opened before him. She had made him her grown-up playfellow, from
her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks, she
had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long enough
separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced
on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him
that she was a taller child in later years--and had taught him little
more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a
woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre
ssed against his; in the nervous thrill of her arms clasped around