ide of a precipice, expecting every
moment to be dashed down a thousand feet, and when daylight came found
he had hung within a foot of the ground all the while!"

"The comparison is apt and delicious," said Elsie, laughing.

"And you love me! Only say it again, Elsie--just once!"

"I won't!" said she. "But I'll box your ears if you don't stop behaving
like a crazy man."

Tom caught Elsie up in his arms and ran twice with her across the floor,
paying no more attention to her cries and struggles than if she had been
a baby.

"That's for punishment!" said Tom.

"Let me down! Please let me down!" pleaded Elsie. "I know you'll drop
me! Oh, you hurt me, Tom!"

Tom placed her on the sofa and seated himself by her side. But she
started away and ran upstairs, sending back a laugh of defiance.

CHAPTER XL.

TWO FACES IN THE GLASS.

When Elsie entered her boudoir, flushed with laughter and breathless
with running, she threw herself on the azure couch, and gathering her
ringlets in a mass between her hand and the warm cheek under which it
was thrust, fell into a deeper train of thought than was usual to her.

"It's done, and I don't care. He loves me, and I must be loved. He's
rich, generous, devoted, worships me and always will, that's one
comfort. There'll be no one to halve his devotion or his money with me,
no one to look glum if I want to be a little bit extravagant. Grant
never refused me anything in his life, but I'm always afraid to ask half
that I want. But with Tom everything will be my own. He won't ask a
question. Such laces as I will have! As for cashmere shawls and silks,
he shall get them for me by the dozens. Elizabeth won't say that such
things are out of place then. I shall be a married woman, free of her
and this old house too, free of everything, but--but----"

Elsie started up, breaking this selfish train of thought with the
action.

"I wish she'd stop talking to me; I don't want to hear about it. Why
won't she bear her trouble alone, if she will make trouble about what
isn't to be helped? I'll have no more confidences with her, that's
certain. It is like breaking one's heart up in little pieces. I don't
want to keep secrets, but forget them; and I will, too, in spite of her.
She shan't make me eternally miserable with her pining and remorse."

Elsie paused before a mirror as these thoughts rose in her mind and half
broke from her lips. She was threading out her curls and trying the
e