thought you could doubt Lois."

"I don't!" he cried, "only I am so afraid!"

"But you shouldn't be afraid," Helen said, smiling; "a girl like Lois
couldn't love a man who was not good and noble. Perhaps, Gifford," she
ventured, after a moment's pause,--"perhaps it will be all right for you,
some time."

"No, no," he answered, "I don't dare to think of it."

Helen might have given him more courage, but John came in, and Gifford
realized that it was very late. "Helen has scolded me, Mr. Ward," he
said, "and it has done me good."

John turned and looked at her. "Can she scold?" he said. And when Gifford
glanced back, as he went down the street, he saw them still standing in
the doorway in the starlight; Helen leaning back a little against John's
arm, so that she might see his face. The clear warm pallor of her cheek
glowed faintly in the frosty air.

Gifford sighed as he walked on. "They are very happy," he thought. "Well,
that sort of happiness may never be for me, but it is something to love a
good woman. I have got that in my life, anyhow."

Helen's confidence in her cousin's instinct might perhaps have been
shaken had she known what pleasure Lois found in the companionship of Mr.
Forsythe, and how that pleasure was encouraged by all her friends. That
very evening, while Gifford was pouring his anxieties into her ear, Lois
was listening to Dick's pictures of the gayeties of social life; the