, a very rainbow of a smile, born of sunshine,
and, raindrops gone, it seems to beautify her lips. But Felix, while
acknowledging its charm, cannot smile back at her. It is all too
strange, too new. He is afraid to believe. As yet there is something
terrible to him in this happiness that has fallen into his life.

"You mean it?" he asks, bending over her. "If to-morrow I were to wake
and find all this an idle dream, how would it be with me then? Say you
mean it!"

"Am I not here?" says she, tremulously, making a slight but eloquent
pressure on one of the arms that are round her. He bends his face to
hers, and as he feels that first glad eager kiss returned--he knows!

CHAPTER LIII.

"True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind."

Of course Barbara is delighted. She proves charming as a confidante.
Nothing can exceed the depth of her sympathy.

When Joyce and Felix came in together in the darkening twilight,
entering the house in a burglarious fashion through the dining-room
window, it so happens that Barbara is there, and is at once struck by a
sense of guilt that seems to surround and envelop them. They had not,
indeed, anticipated meeting Barbara in that room of all others, and are
rather taken aback when they come face to face with her.

"I assure you we have not come after the spoons," says Felix, in a
would-be careless tone that could not have deceived an infant, and with
a laugh, so frightfully careless that it would have terrified the life
out of you.

"You certainly don't look like it," says Mrs. Monkton, whose heart has
begun to beat high with hope. She hardly knows whether it is better to
fall upon their necks forthwith and declare she knows all about it, or
else to pretend ignorance. She decides upon the latter as being the
easier; after all they mightn't like the neck process. Most people have
a fancy for telling their own tales, to have them told for one is
annoying. "You haven't the requisite murderous expression," she says,
unable to resist a touch of satire. "You look rather frightened you two.
What have you been doing?" She is too good natured not to give them an
opening for their confession.

"Not much, and yet a great deal," says Felix. He has advanced a little,
while Joyce, on the contrary, has meanl