I have commenced for
her, I am going away."

The child--she was scarcely more than that--grew whiter, but the shadows
of the evening hid the fact from her companion.

"You ought not to go," she said, slowly, and rather faintly, "until you
have made another trial."

"Oh! It is useless!" he replied.

"Is it that you cannot love--Millie--or that you cannot love--any one?"

He hesitated, puzzled, himself, at the question.

"I never did love any one--any woman," he confessed, "and perhaps I
never shall. But your sister seems peculiarly hard to love. Yet she is a
very handsome girl and equipped with a mind of unusual calibre."

Daisy acknowledged this description of her sister's charms. She remarked
that it was strange that such a combination did not suffice to
accomplish the desired result.

"There are people who do find her entertaining," she added. "Mr. Weil is
one of them."

"Oh, Archie!" said Roseleaf. "He finds everything entertaining. It is
nothing worth remarking. She is the exact description of his ideal in
feminine face and form. He once gave me the list of the excellencies of
a 'perfect woman,' and your sister has them all."

The younger Miss Fern had her own opinions about this matter. She
thought the innocent man at her side had not quite gauged the interest
that Mr. Weil took in her family.

"I will make a proposition," she said, with a light laugh, when they had
talked longer upon the subject. "I am afraid it won't seem worth much to
you, and perhaps you can do better; but why can't you stay here, and--if
Millie won't do--make love to _me_?"

Darkness is responsible for many things. In the light, Daisy could not
have uttered those words, even in jest. There, when the sun had set and
the stars were not yet on duty, she found the courage to make that
suggestion.

"You are very kind," he stammered, when he grasped her meaning. "But I
do not think it will answer. I am afraid love cannot be pushed to any
point without its own initiative."

"That is probably the case with _real_ love," replied the girl, "but an
imitation that would serve your purpose might be evolved in the way I
have indicated. For instance, you could take my hand in yours--like
this--and I could lean toward you in--this way. And then, if you had
sufficient courage--"

Before he dreamed of doing it, it was done! He had kissed her on her
tempting lips, placed within an inch of his own.

"You are too good a scholar," she pouted, r