lose to hers, but she felt no desire to escape. That laugh
of his was still ringing like sweetest music through her soul.

He took her shoulders between his hands, searching her face closely.

"And now," he said--"now tell me his name!"

Yet a moment longer she withstood him. Then she yielded, and went into
his arms, laughing also--a broken, tearful laugh.

"His name is--Lester Cheveril," she whispered. "But I--I can't think how
you guessed."

He answered her as he turned her face upwards to meet his own.

"The friend who stands by sees many things," he said wisely. "And Love
is not always blind."

"But you--you weren't in love," she protested. "Not when----"

He interrupted her instantly and convincingly.

"I have always loved you," he said.

And she believed him, because her own heart told her that he had spoken
the truth.

* * * * *

The Right Man

I

"He hasn't proposed, then?"

"No; he hasn't." A pause; then, reluctantly: "I haven't given him the
opportunity."

"Violet! Do you want to starve?"

The speaker turned in his chair, and looked at the girl bending over the
fire, with a quick, impatient frown on his handsome face. They were
twins, these two, the only representatives of a family that had been
wealthy three generations before them, but whose resources had dwindled
steadily under the management of three successive spendthrifts, and had
finally disappeared altogether in a desperate speculation which had
promised to restore everything.

"You don't seem to realise," the young man said, "that we are absolutely
penniless--destitute. Everything is sunk in this Winhalla Railway
scheme, up to the last penny. It seemed a gorgeous chance at the time.
It ought to have brought in thousands. It would have done, too, if it
had been properly supported. But it's no good talking about that. It's
just a gigantic failure, or, if it ever does succeed, it will come too
late to help us. Just our infernal luck! And now the question is, what
is going to be done? You'll have to marry that fellow, Violet. It's
absolutely the only thing for you to do. And I--I suppose I must
emigrate."

The girl did not turn her head. There was something tense about her
attitude.

"I could emigrate too, Jerry," she said, in a low voice.

"You!" Her brother turned more fully round. "You!" he said again. "Are
you mad, I wonder?"

She made a slight