"She will, Mitchy--she WILL!" They stood a moment in the recovered brightness; after which he mechanically--as with the pressure of quite another consciousness--put on his cap.

"Well then, shall that hope between us be the thing-- ?" "The thing ?"--she just wondered.
"Why that will have drawn us together--to hold us so, you know--this afternoon.

I mean the secret we spoke of." She put out to him on this the hand he had taken a few minutes before, and he clasped it now only with the firmness it seemed to give and to ask for.

"Oh it will do for that!" she said as they went out together.
III It had been understood that he was to take his leave on the morrow, though Vanderbank was to stay another day.

Mr.Longdon had for the Sunday dinner invited three or four of his neighbours to "meet" the two gentlemen from town, so that it was not till the company had departed, or in other words till near bedtime, that our four friends could again have become aware, as between themselves, of that directness of mutual relation which forms the subject of our picture.