ong, uneasy sleep, in which I dreamed of
losing what I most wanted."

"But it's not all strange to you as it is to me. I can't quite believe
that there's nothing on my shoulders--no care, no anxiety, just--well,
_your_ shoulders! Oh, but," she went on hastily, "don't think that means
I want you to carry everything for me; indeed I don't. I want to
carry--half!"

"Ah, but that's it," he answered. "My shoulders for your burdens, yours
for mine. That way neither of us will feel half the weight of either.
I'm not pretending that I shall give you a life of wholly sheltered
ease; it won't be that, and you don't want it, not in this
burden-bearing world. But--you shall have some things that you have been
denied, my brave girl! Georgiana, I can't tell you how it touched
me--the dress you made to be married in."

Her eyes went down now before the look in his.

"I'll tell you fairly that I longed with all my heart to take you to
some place worthy of your beauty and find a wedding gown for you--not
necessarily a very costly one, but one that should bring out all you are
capable of showing. But when I saw you, looking just yourself, in the
silk that was like your mother's,"--he leaned forward, taking both her
hands in his and looking straight into her face, compelling her gaze to
lift to his lest she should miss what she knew was there,--"I felt
something inside my heart break wide open--with worship for you, little,
strong, splendid spirit that you are!"

He pressed the hands against his lips. Then he touched two rings upon
her left hand: exquisite and rare jewels were set in both engagement and
wedding rings, after the modern fashion. But there was a third ring
there, guarding the others, a slender band of gold, worn thin by many
years of hard, self-forgetting work--the ring which David Warne had
placed twenty-seven years ago upon the hand of his bride. Jefferson
Craig studied all three, turning them round and round upon the rosy
finger they encircled.

Presently he spoke again, very gently: "My rings on your hand mean to me
love and beauty, loyalty and truth. But her ring stands for all that
and--service. We need it there, to remind us what we owe the world we
live in. She paid her debt; we'll pay ours, in memory of her. Bless her
for giving me her daughter!"

For a minute Georgiana could not speak. Then, with her dark eyes
sparkling through the mist of tears which had taken her unawares, she
seized his hand and lifted