it all so quietly,
and now Nature is having her revenge; you will be better presently, my
darling.'

And she was right: Audrey's strong will and sense of duty soon overcame
the hysterical emotion.

'I think I am tired,' she acknowledged; and to her mother's relief she
consented to lie still and do nothing. 'I will make up for this idle day
to-morrow,' she said with a faint smile, as she closed her eyes. 'Now go
downstairs, mother dear, and don't trouble about me any more, unless you
want to make me ashamed of myself for having been such a baby.'

'She is just worn out with keeping everything to herself, and trying to
spare us pain,' Mrs. Ross said to her husband, as she recounted this
little scene to him. 'I never knew Audrey hysterical before; I was
obliged to give her some sal volatile. I think she is asleep now.'

'I don't hold with sal volatile,' returned the Doctor a little grimly.
'Sleep is a far safer remedy, Emmie. Leave her to herself; she will be
all right in a day or two.'

But Dr. Ross sighed as he got up and went to his study. Audrey little
knew that her father was in the secret; that in his pain and perplexity
Michael had at last taken his best friend into his confidence.

'We must leave things to work round,' had been his parting words to
Michael that morning. 'No one, not even her father, must coerce her. All
these years you have been like a son to me, Mike; and if my child could
bring herself to love you as you deserve to be loved, no one would be
better pleased than I should be.'

'And you will tell no one--not even Cousin Emmeline?'

'Why, I should not dare tell her,' returned the Doctor with rather a
dejected smile, for he hated to keep things from his wife. 'Geraldine
would get hold of it, and then it would come round to Harcourt. No, I
will keep my own counsel, Mike. And now good-bye, and good luck to you!'

'It is the Burnett motto,' replied Michael, with a touch of solemnity in
his voice--'"Good luck God send." Take care of her, Cousin John.'

And then the two men grasped hands and parted.

'If I had to search the whole world over for a husband for her, I'd
choose Mike,' was Dr. Ross's thought as he drove himself back again to
Woodcote.

Audrey kept her promise and made up for her one idle day. 'Work was good
for everyone,' she said, 'and it was especially good for her.' So the
following morning she resumed lessons with Mollie. She had complained a
few weeks before that her German w