eremptoriness. "Gertrude is going to be
young to-night. Oh, what will you wear?"

"There is nothing but black silk," answers Gertrude, "and that never
was especially becoming, as I can indulge in no accessories. But
Laura's dress is perfection. The palest, loveliest pink you can
imagine, and no end of lace. Luckily, Mr. Delancy has not his fortune
to make."

Floyd kisses his wife tenderly and whispers some hurried words of
comfort. When they are gone the professor drops into his own luxurious
chair and does not allow Mrs. Grandon time for despondency. He has an
Old World charm; he has, too, the other charm of a young and fresh
heart when he is not digging into antiquities.

Some way the talk comes around to Gertrude. She is so delicate, so
melancholy, she shrinks so away from all the happy confusion that most
women love. "Is it her grief for her father?" he asks.

"I don't think it all that," says Violet, with a most beguiling flush.
"There was another sorrow in her life, a--she loved some one very much.
If he had died it would not have been as bad, but--oh, I wonder if I
_ought_ to tell?" and she finds so much encouragement in his eyes that
she goes on. "He was--very unworthy."

"Ah!" The professor strokes and fondles his long, sunny beard. "But she
should cast him out, she should not keep pale and thin, and in ill
health, and brood over the trouble."

"I do not believe her life is--well, you see they all have other
pursuits and are fond of society, and she stays too much alone,"
explains Violet, with a perplexed brow. "She is so good to me, I like
her."

"Who could help being good to thee, _mignonne_?" and the look with
which he studies the flower-like face brings a soft flush to it.
Torture would not make her complain, but she feels in her inmost soul
that Gertrude, alone, has been even kind. And she wishes somehow she
could make him like her better than any of the others, even the
beautiful madame, about whom he is enthusiastic.

"Bah!" he says. "Why should one go mourning for an unworthy love? When
it is done and over there is the end. When you are once disenchanted,
how can you believe?"

"But you are not disenchanted," says Violet, stoutly. "You have
believed and loved, you have made a little world of your own, and even
if it does go down in the great ocean you can never quite forget it was
there."

"But there are other worlds. See, Mrs. Grandon, when I was
two-and-twenty I loved to madness. She was