d enough,
they would be happy. Sometimes some one of them fancied he was just
upon the point of making the immortal discovery; but there he always
broke down."

"They were looking in the wrong place," said Lois thoughtfully.

"Is there a _right_ place to look then?"

Lois smiled. It was a smile that struck Philip very much, for its calm
and confident sweetness; yes, more than that; for its gladness. She was
not in haste to answer; apparently she felt some difficulty.

"I do not think gold ever made anybody happy," she said at length.

"That is what moralists tell us. But, after all, Miss Lothrop, money is
the means to everything else in this world."

"Not to happiness, is it?"

"Well, what is, then? They say--and perhaps you will say--that
friendships and affections can do more; but I assure you, where there
are not the means to stave off grinding toil or crushing poverty,
affections wither; or if they do not quite wither, they bear no golden
fruit of happiness. On the contrary, they offer vulnerable spots to the
stings of pain."

"Money can do a great deal," said Lois.

"What can do more?"

Lois lifted up her eyes and looked at her questioner inquiringly. Did
he know no better than that?

"With money, one can do everything," he went on, though struck by her
expression.

"Yes," said Lois; "and yet--all that never satisfied anybody."

"Satisfied!" cried Philip. "Satisfied is a very large word. Who is
satisfied?"

Lois glanced up again, mutely.

"If I dared venture to say so--you look, Miss Lothrop, you absolutely
look, as if _you_ were; and yet it is impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because it is what all the generations of men have been trying for,
ever since the world began; and none of them ever found it."

"Not if they looked for it in their money bags," said Lois. "It was
never found there."

"Was it ever found anywhere?"

"Why, yes!"

"Pray tell me where, that I may have it too!"

The girl's cheeks flushed; and what was very odd to Philip, her eyes,
he was sure, had grown moist; but the lids fell over them, and he could
not see as well as he wished. What a lovely face it was, he thought, in
this its mood of stirred gravity!

"Do you ever read the Bible, Mr. Dillwyn?"

The question occasioned him a kind of revulsion. The Bible! was _that_
to be brought upon his head? A confused notion of organ-song, the
solemnity of a still house, a white surplice, and words in measured
caden