aid Marie.

But Bruno waited for Eva's answer.

"I suppose," she said nervously, "it means liking a person, and wishing
for his company, and wanting him to love one."

"And I suppose that it is caring for him so much that thou wouldst count
nothing too great a sacrifice, to attain his highest good. That is how
God loved us, my children."

Eva thought this extremely poor and tame, beside her own lovely ideal.

"Then," said Marie, "if I love Margaret, I shall want _her_ to be happy.
I shall not want her to make me happy, unless it would make her so."

"Right, my child," said Bruno, with a smile of approbation. "To do
otherwise would be loving Marie, not Margaret."

"But, Father!" exclaimed Eva. "Do you mean to say that if my betrothed
prefers to go hawking rather than sit with me, if I love him I shall
wish him to leave me?"

"Whom wouldst thou be loving, if not?"

"I could not wish him to go and leave me!"

"My child, there is a divine self-abnegation to which very few attain.
But those few come nearest to the imitation of Him who `pleased not
Himself,' and I think--God knoweth--often they are the happiest. Let us
all ask God for grace to reach it. `This is My commandment, that ye
have love one to another.'"

And, as was generally the case when he had said all he thought necessary
at the moment, Bruno rose, and with a benediction quitted the room.

"Call that loving!" said Eva, contemptuously, when he was gone. "Poor
tame stuff! I should not thank you for it."

"Well, I should," said Doucebelle, quietly.

"Oh, thou!" was Eva's answer, in the same tone. "Why, thou hast no
heart to begin with."

Doucebelle silently doubted that statement.

"O Eva, for shame!" said Marie. "Doucebelle always does what every body
wants her, unless she thinks it is wrong."

"Thou dost not call that love, I hope?"

"I think it is quite as like it as wishing people to do what they don't
want, to please you," said Marie, sturdily.

"I don't believe one of you knows any thing about it," loftily returned
Eva. "If I had been Margaret, now, I could not have sat quietly to that
broidery. I could not have borne it!"

Margaret looked up quickly, changed colour, and with a slight
compression of her lower lip, went back to her work in silence.

"But what wouldst thou have done, Eva?" demanded the practical little
Marie. "Wouldst thou have stared out of the window all day long?"

"No!" returned Eva with fervent emphas