as teaching the librarian. She needed instruction,
certainly; and the steps that led up to it had been so gradual that it
seemed natural enough now. But no one knew the hundred little things
which had been done to make it seem so.

What was he trying to do?

His cousin, Adelaide Kellinger, determined to find out that point, was
already domiciled with her maid at the inn. There had been no
concealment about Honor; Wainwright had told Adelaide the whole story.
He also showed to her the librarian's little letters whenever they came,
and she commented upon them naturally, and asked many questions. "Do you
know, I feel really interested in the child myself?" she said to him one
day; and it was entirely true.

When he told her that he was going to the mountains again, she asked if
he would not take her with him. "It will be a change from the usual
summer places; and, besides, I find I am lonely if long away from you,"
she said frankly. She always put it upon that ground. She had learned
that nothing makes a man purr more satisfactorily than the hearing that
the woman in whose society he finds himself particularly comfortable has
an especial liking for and dependence upon himself; immediately he makes
it all a favor and kindness to _her_, and is happy. So Adelaide came
with Stephen, and did make him more comfortable. His barren room bloomed
with fifty things which came out of her trunks and her ingenuity; she
coaxed and bribed the cook; she won the landlady to a later breakfast.
She arranged a little parlor, and was always there when he came home,
ready to talk to him a little, but not too much; ready to divine his
mood and make the whole atmosphere accord with it at once. They had been
there three weeks, and of course Adelaide had met the librarian.

For those three weeks she remained neutral, and studied the ground; then
she began to act. She sent for John Royce. And she threw continuous
rose-light around Honor.

After the final tableau of a spectacle-play, a second view is sometimes
given with the nymphs and fairies all made doubly beautiful by
rose-light. Mrs. Kellinger now gave this glow. She praised Honor's
beauty.

Stephen had not observed it. How could he be so blind? Why, the girl had
fathomless eyes, exquisite coloring, the form of a Greek statue, and the
loveliest mouth! Then she branched off.

"What a beautiful thing it would be to see such a girl as that fall in
love!--a girl so impulsive, so ignorant of t