als, and looked exceedingly
distinguished in the pale red gown which she had put on to please her
aunt; but the color of which only intensified the unnatural pallor of
her complexion. The two men whom she sat between found her a
disappointing companion, cold and formal in manner. At any other time
she would have been humiliated and astonished to hear herself make such
cut-and-dried remarks, such little trite observations. She was sitting
opposite Charles, and she vaguely wondered once or twice, when she saw
him making others laugh, and heard snatches of the flippant talk which
was with him, as she knew now, a sort of defensive armor, how he could
manage to produce it; while Charles, half wild with a mad surging hope
that would not be kept down by any word of Dare's, looked across at her
as often as he dared, and wondered in his turn at the tranquil dignity,
the quiet ordered smile of the face which a few hours ago he had seen
shaken with emotion.

Her eyes met his for a moment. Were they the same eyes that but now had
met his, half blind with tears? He felt still the touch of those tears
upon his hand. He hastily looked away again, and plunged headlong into
an answer to something Mabel was saying to him on her favorite subject
of evolution. All well-brought-up young ladies have a subject nowadays,
which makes their conversation the delightful thing it is; and Mabel, of
course, was not behind the fashion.

"Yes," Ruth heard Charles reply, "I believe with you we go through many
lives, each being a higher state than the last, and nearer perfection.
So a man passes gradually through all the various grades of the
nobility, soaring from the lowly honorable upward into the duke, and
thence by an easy transition into an angel. Courtesy titles, of course,
present a difficulty to the more thoughtful; but, as I am sure you will
have found, to be thoughtful always implies difficulty of some kind."

"It does, indeed," said Mabel, puzzled but not a little flattered. "I
sometimes think one reads too much; one longs so for deep books--Korans,
and things. I must confess,"--with a sigh--"I can't interest myself in
the usual young lady's library that other girls read."

"Can't you?" replied Charles. "Now, I can. I study that department of
literature whenever I have the chance, and I have generally found that
the most interesting part of a young lady's library is to be found in
that portion of the book-shelf which lies between the rows