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Mayburn's interested eyes were like glimpses of another world, and Hilland's, even more voluminous and infinitely more interesting to one fair reader, to whom they were sacred except as she doled out occasional paragraphs which related sufficiently to the general order of things to be read aloud.

Mayburn's nephew he had met with a reception which would not have been accorded to one less favorably introduced. How vividly in after years Graham remembered that rainy May morning!

Graham would not have come, however, had not Grace, who had just returned from Mrs. Mayburn's cottage, caused a postscript to be added, giving the information that his aunt was seriously ill, and that her physician thought it might be a long time before she recovered, even if life was spared.

She hoped that her lover was right, and that Graham's heart, in accordance with his development theory, was so inchoate as to be incapable of much suffering. She was not sure, however. There was something she surmised rather than detected. She felt it now in Mrs. Mayburn's presence, and caught a glimpse of it in the flush that was fading from her cheeks.

I must now pay my respects to my aunt, or I shall lose not only her good graces but my supper also;" and with a smiling bow he turned and walked rapidly up the path, and disappeared within Mrs. Mayburn's open door. Grace looked after him, and the perplexed contraction of her brow deepened. She picked up Hilland's letter, and slowly and musingly folded it.

Then, to the old lady's horror, he dashed through the trees and shrubbery, took a picket-fence in a flying leap, and circled round the house till Mrs. Mayburn's head was dizzy. Then she saw him coming toward the door as if he would ride through the house; but the horse stopped almost instantly, and Graham was on his feet, handing the bridle to the gaping groom.

She had serious misgivings, however, which Mrs. Mayburn's sudden indisposition, and the marks of suffering upon her face, did not tend to banish. Whatever the truth might be, she felt that he had shown much thoughtfulness for her in his frankness with Hilland. He had rendered it unnecessary for her to conceal her knowledge of his regard. She need have no secrets, so far as he was concerned.

From time to time a letter appeared in Mrs. Mayburn's favorite journal signed by the initials of the traveller; and these epistles she cut out and pasted most carefully in a book which Grace jestingly called her "family Bible." But as time passed, Graham occupied less and less space in the thoughts of all except his aunt.

Its harbinger first appeared in the form of a white Spitz dog, barking vivaciously under the apple-tree, where a path from a neighboring residence intersected the walk leading from Mrs. Mayburn's cottage to the street. Evidently some one was playing with the little creature, and was pretending to be kept at bay by its belligerent attitude.

Under the physician's remedies Grace rallied more rapidly; and he said that if carried to her room she would soon sleep quietly. "I wish to see Mr. Graham first," she said, decisively. To Mrs. Mayburn's questioning glance, he added, "Gratify her. I have quieting remedies at hand." "He will prove more quieting than all remedies.