ollowing them, and to inform herself on those subjects which Mr.
Wayland declared essential to an education.

If circumstances within doors were conducive to mental growth, those
without were even more favorable to physical development. The salt air
and softly tempered sunshine were perpetual tonics. The place was full
of exquisite flowers. She felt that she had never seen roses until she
came to Santa Barbara. To a wounded, sensitive spirit there is even
a healing influence in the brightness and perfume of flowers. They
smiled so sweetly at her that she could not help smiling back. The
sunny days passed, one so like another that they begot serenity. The
even climate, with its sunny skies, tended to inspirit as well as to
invigorate. Almost every day she spent hours in driving and sailing,
and as the season advanced she began to take ocean baths, which on
that genial coast are suitable almost all the year round. Going thus
to nature for healing, she did not appeal in vain. Strength and
grace were bestowed imperceptibly, yet surely, as spring clothes the
leafless tree.

A love such as had grown unbidden and unconsciously in Madge's heart
could not be content with the meagre reward of a little admiration.
Such an affection was softening and ennobling in its character, and
the mere desire to compel Graydon to glance at her as she had seen him
look at Miss Wildmere grew into the higher ambition to become such a
woman as would approach in some degree his ideal. She knew his tastes,
and as she thought over the past she believed she could gauge his
character as could no other. She soon recognized that he was not an
exceptional man, that she was not worshipping a hero. He himself
would be the last one to claim pre-eminence among his fellows. But his
genial, open nature, his physical strength, and his generous, kindly
impulses made him an eminently lovable man, and--well, she loved him,
and believed she ever should. Frail and defective in almost every
respect herself, she would have thought it absurd to cherish some
lofty and impossible ideal. He was hearty, wholesome, honest, and
she soon began to see that it would be a better and a nobler thing--a
nearer approach to happiness--to become a woman whom he could trust
and respect than merely to win a little admiration as a tribute to
ephemeral beauty.

She would attain beauty if she could, but it should be the appendage,
the ornament of mind and character. She, who had seemed t