Guarded as Van Berg was in his narrative, Miss Burton was able to read more "between the lines" than in his words. He did not understand her motive when she said, as if it were her first obvious thought: "The picture which you have presented, even to the eye of my fancy, is uniquely beautiful, and I think it must redeem Miss Mayhew in your mind, from all her disagreeable associations. But in my estimation she appeared to even better advantage in the greeting she gave her father last evening. Was there ever a more delicious surprise on earth, than that poor man had when he returned and found a true and loving daughter awaiting him? With her filial hands she has already lifted him out of the mire of his degradation, and to-day he is a gentleman whom you involuntarily respect. O Mr. Van Berg, I cannot tell ou how inexpressibly beautiful and reassuring such things are to me! You look at the changes we are witnessing from the standpoint of an artist, I from that of poor wounded humanity; and what I have seen in Ida Mayhew and her father, is proof to me that there is a good God above all the chaos around me, which I cannot understand and which at times disheartens me. Their happier and ennobled faces are a prophecy and an earnest of that time when the sway of evil shall be broken, when famishing souls and empty hearts shall be filled, when broken, thwarted lives are made perfect, and what was missed and lost regained." She looked away from him into the summer sky, which the sun was flooding with cloudless light. There were no tears in her eyes, but an expression of intense and sorrowful longing that was far beyond such simple and natural expression. "Jennie Burton," said Van Berg, in a low, earnest voice, "there are times when I could suffer all things to make you happy."