Archibald Chesney would never have put it that way. Yet Missy, with Mr.
Brown's eyes upon her in an openly admiring gaze, wouldn't have had him
changed one bit.

But, when at last sleep came to her in her little white bed, on the
silvery tide of the moon, it carried a dream to slip up under the
tight-closed eyes...

The ball is at its height. The door of the conservatory opens and a fair
young creature steals in. She is fairer than the flowers themselves
as, with a pretty consciousness of her own grace, she advances into the
bower. Her throat is fair and rounded under the diamonds that are no
brighter than her own great grey eyes; her nut-brown locks lie in
heavy masses on her well-shaped head, while across her forehead a few
rebellious tresses wantonly wander.

She suddenly sees in the shadows that other figure which has started
perceptibly at her entrance; a tall and eminently gloomy figure, with
hair of a rare blackness, and eyes dark and insouciant but admiring
withal.

With a silken frou-frou she glides toward him, happy and radiant, for
she is in her airiest mood tonight.

"Is not my dress charming, Mr. Brown?" she cries with charming naivete.
"Does it not become me?"

"It is as lovely as its wearer," replied the other, with a suppressed
sigh.

"Pouf! What a simile! Who dares compare me with a paltry gown?"

Then, laughing at his discomfiture, the coquette, with slow nonchalance,
gathers up her long train.

"But I'll forgive you--this once," she concedes, "for there is
positively no one to take poor little me back to the ballroom."

And Lady Melissa slips her hand beneath Mr. Brown's arm, and glances up
at him with laughing, friendly eyes...

CHAPTER VI. INFLUENCING ARTHUR

No one in Cherryvale ever got a word from Melissa about the true
inwardness of the spiritual renaissance she experienced the winter that
the Reverend MacGill came to the Methodist church; naturally not her
father nor mother nor Aunt Nettie, because grown-ups, though nice and
well-meaning, with their inability to "understand," and their tendency
to laugh make one feel shy and reticent about the really deep and vital
things. And not even Tess O'Neill, Missy's chum that year, a lively,
ingenious, and wonderful girl, was in this case clever enough to obtain
complete confidence.

Once before Missy had felt the flame divine--a deep, vague kind of glow
all subtly mixed up with "One Sweetly Solemn Thought" and such slow,
stirr