(wistfully), "if you cared to have me." Guy is touched.

"You are a little darling!" he says, "and I am not half good enough for you."

63

CHAPTER IV.

THE SUN SHINES.

T

HE marriage is to take place at the end

of June. Dolores is to spend a little time at Wentworth, and Lady Wentworth is then to bring her to London, to make final arrangements about the trousseau and wedding. Lady Heronmere has volunteered to give the breakfast. The favour with which her sister has received Dolores has gone a very long way towards reconciling Guy's mother to the marriage, but she still looks, with feelings quite unakin to pleasure, at the prospect of receiving the girl at Wentworth, and having to depart so far from her habit of life as to stay in London

for any time in the season.

But throughout her life Lady Wentworth has always been guided by a strong sense of duty, and now that she has discovered her son's secret, she feels bound, at whatever cost to herself, to keep him from suffering and temptation. For she regards it as a terrible sin to love the wife of another man, even when there is no guilt in the heart of him who loves, and even when the love is, as now, unshared by the woman to whom it is given.

The day arrives, and Dolores leaves Lady Heronmere's house to visit the home that is to be hers in the future. She is full of joyous anticipation, not altogether unmixed with a certain dread of meeting Lady Wentworth. She has received the kindest letter from her, and Guy has assured her a thousand times that she has nothing to fear; but she knows in her heart that his mother is not pleased with the marriage. Else why did she let so long a time

elapse without sending her either letter or message? But Guy will be there, and he is all in all to her; whom and what would she not face with him! Every day her love for him grows greater and deeper; it is so transparent no one can help seeing it. Relieved from the presence of Milly, she has no more jealous fear-her life is a succession of pleasures.

This new existence, in which everyone fêtes and pets her, in which she sees and mixes in the gaieties and pleasures of the world, seems to come upon her like a glimpse of Paradise, after the long dull years of her childhood, whose monotony had only been broken by pain. She shudders at the remembrance of it.

If," she thinks, "after all this happiness, I should have to go back again to that ?"

She has become a different being, full of sprightly grace, radiant with happiness,

more confident in herself, since all she says

VOL. III.

F

and does seems to please those around her; and altogether Guy cannot help feeling things have turned out better than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams, and that, after all, Fortune has not treated him so cruelly. Lady Heronmere is exceedingly loth to part with Dolores-her son is in absolute despair.

"I suppose you'll ask me sometimes to Wentworth ?" he says, gloomily, to Guy, as he wishes him good-bye.

His cousin gives him a hearty slap on the shoulder, and answers, laughing,

"I think you always came pretty much as you liked before, my dear fellow, and I don't see anything to hinder your doing so in future."

"That's his cursed confidence!" reflects the young man, dismally; "he doesn't feel the least afraid of me; he knows she's so fond of him.”

Guy's feeling for Dolores is of the calmest kind; there is no passion in it—it is