on showed a little color as she drew near; but there was not
much embarrassment in the calm, kind eyes.

"This is indeed a stroke of good-fortune," he said, "for I came down for
the very purpose of having a talk with you all by yourself--about
Lionel. But I did not imagine I should meet you here."

"I am going down to the station," she said. "I expect a parcel by the
train you must have come by; and I want it at once."

"May I go with you and carry it for you?" he said, promptly; and of
course she could not refuse so civil an offer. The awkward part of the
arrangement was that they had to go along through this straggling strip
of wood in single file, making a really confidential chat almost an
impossibility; whereupon he proposed, and she agreed, that they should
get out into the highway; and thereafter they went on to the station by
the ordinary road.

But this task he had undertaken proved to be a great deal more difficult
and delicate than he had anticipated. To have a talk with Francie--that
seemed simple enough; it was less simple, as he discovered, to have to
tell Lionel's cousin that the young man had gone and engaged himself to
be married. Indeed, he beat about the bush for a considerable time.

"You see," he said, "a young fellow at his time of life, especially if
he has been petted a good deal, is very apt to be wayward and restless,
and likely to get into trouble through the mere impulsiveness, the
recklessness of youth--"

"Mr. Mangan," Miss Francie said, with a smile in the quiet gray eyes,
"why do you always talk of Linn as if he were so much younger than you?
There is no great difference. You always speak as if you were quite
middle-aged."

"I am worse than middle-aged--I am resigned, and read Marcus Aurelius,"
he said. "I suppose I have taken life too easily. Youth is the time for
fighting; there is no fight left in me at all; I accept what happens.
Oh, by the way, when my book on Comte comes out, I may have to buckle on
my armor again; I suppose there will be strife and war and deadly
thrusts; unless, indeed, the Positivists may not consider me worth
answering. However, that is of no consequence; it's about Linn I have
come down; and really, Miss Francie, I fear he is in a bad way, and that
he is taking a worse way to get out of it."

"I am very sorry to hear that," she said, gravely.

"And then he's such a good fellow," Mangan continued. "If he were
selfish or cruel or grasping, one might thi