leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more
for him than all the doctors."

"I am sure she did."

Marjorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone. Yet
the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that she
had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.

"So it is all right, little girl, all right now?"

She nodded. "It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh,
Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see it
all now, but now at last I know--I do know my own mind."

"And your own heart?"

"And my own heart."

She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what had
been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see him.
How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she
remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream
for ever--"Better than my life." So he loved Joan, and now she knew that
she too loved with her whole heart.

Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine
young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love.
Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to
stay.

"And Joan?" Marjorie asked.

"Joan?" he said. "Joan, she is in her own home."

"And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?"

"Her pride is still between us, Marjorie," he said, and quickly turned
the conversation, and a few minutes later was up in the bedroom talking
cheerily enough to Tom.

"It's all right, Alston, everything is all right. Lady Linden wanted to
shoot the horse; but I wouldn't have it. I owe him too much--you
understand, Alston, don't you? Everything is all right between Marjorie
and me."

And then Hugh went back to Hurst Dormer--thank, Heaven there was some
happiness in this world! There was happiness at Cornbridge, and after
Cornbridge Hurst Dormer seemed darker and more solitary than ever.

It was while she had been talking to Hugh that Marjorie had made up her
mind.

"I am going to tell Joan the whole truth, the whole truth," she thought.
And Hugh was scarcely out of the house before Marjorie sat down to write
her letter to Joan.

"... I know that you have always blamed him for what was never
his fault. He did it because he is generous and unselfish. He
loved me in those days. I know that it could not have been the
great abiding love; it was only liking that turned to f