stern reality altogether, but I fancy you will often tire of me before
you grow quite accustomed to my strange caprices?"

"Why my dear little Honor, is that the color you would have me paint
your future? surely not. If Destiny has raised my hand to blend the
colors in the fair scenery of your life, I will stain the canvas a
'_couleur de rose_,' and make it a lovely thing to contemplate, if I
possibly can, so do not ever sigh to-day for to-morrow, know beforehand
that it will be just as you will have it."

"Ah, ha! Mr. Rayne, who is waxing romantic now," the girl cried
playfully, "I'm so glad to have caught you once. But do you know, I
sometimes wonder, if all these days have not really been spent in my
fairy land, for things have happened as harmoniously as though life were
not a series of discords at its best, Nanette was not forced to leave
me, and you did not get bored at my eccentricities, and I liked you so
much right away, and our safe journey, and everything together."

"Well, I hope it will convince you my child," said Rayne earnestly,
"that life in its common-place acceptation is not so dreadful as you
have pronounced it--wait a while--a little practical experience will
serve to persuade you, that there are a few redeeming traits in the big,
nasty world after all, and will force you to give up these wild theories
of idealism that are strangely out of place in a young girl of our
period."

"So many tell me that," said Honor distractedly, "but I can't know of
course, just yet, what difference all the complicated circumstances that
wind themselves around other girl's lives, will make in mine, if they
change me at all, they must make an entirely different person of me, and