burning on the table; my son was kneeling at my pillow, and
we two were alone.

THE MORNING.

THE wind is fainter, but there is still no calm. The rain is ceasing,
but there is still no sunshine. The view from my window shows me the
mist heavy on the earth, and a dim gray veil drawn darkly over the sky.
Less than twelve hours since, such a prospect would have saddened me for
the day. I look out at it this morning, through the bright medium of
my own happiness, and not the shadow of a shade falls across the steady
inner sunshine that is poring over my heart.

The pen lingers fondly in my hand, and yet it is little, very little,
that I have left to say. The Purple Volume lies open by my side, with
the stories ranged together in it in the order in which they were read.
My son has learned to prize them already as the faithful friends who
served him at his utmost need. I have only to wind off the little thread
of narrative on which they are all strung together before the volume is
closed and our anxious literary experiment fairly ended.

My son and I had a quiet hour together on that happy night before we
retired to rest. The little love-plot invented in George's interests now
required one last stroke of diplomacy to complete it before we all threw
off our masks and assumed our true characters for the future. When my
son and I parted for the night, we had planned the necessary stratagem
for taking our lovely guest by surprise as soon as she was out of her
bed in the morning.

Shortly after seven o'clock I sent a message to Jessie by her maid,
informing her that a good night's rest had done wonders for me, and that
I expected to see her in my study at half past seven, as we had arranged
the evening before. As soon as her answer, promising to be punctual to
the appointment, had reached me, I took George into my study--left him
in my place to plead his own cause--and stole away, five minutes before
the half hour, to join my brothers in the breakfast-room.

Although the sense of my own happiness disposed me to take the brightest
view of my son's chances, I must nevertheless acknowledge that some
nervous anxieties still fluttered about my heart while the slow minutes
of suspense were counting themselves out in the breakfast-room. I had as
little attention to spare for Owen's quiet prognostications of success
as for Morgan's pitiless sarcasms on love, courtship, and matrimony. A
quarter of an hour elapsed--then twenty mi