"Headache, I believe," returned the squire laconically, and silence ensued for a few moments. "I should not wonder if it rained again this evening," he added presently as they passed through the park gate, out into the road. The sky was black and it was hard to see anything beyond the yellow streak of light which fell from the lamps and ran along the road before the gig. "If it turns out a fine night, don't come for us. We will walk home," said the squire to the groom as they descended before the vicarage and Stamboul, who had sat on the floor between them, sprang down to the ground. John was startled when he met Mrs. Goddard. He was amazed at the change in her appearance for which no one had prepared him. She met him indeed very cordially but he felt as though she were not the same woman he had known so short a time before. There was still in her face that delicate pathetic expression which had at first charmed him, there was still the same look in her eyes; but what had formerly seemed so attractive seemed now exaggerated. Her cheeks looked wan and hollow and there were deep shadows about her eyes and temples; her lips had lost their colour and the lines about her mouth had suddenly become apparent where John had not before suspected them. She looked ten years older as she put her thin hand in his and smiled pleasantly at his greeting. Some trite phrase about the "ravages of time" crossed John's mind and gave him a disagreeable sensation, for which it was hard to account. He felt as though his dream were suddenly dead and a strange reality had taken life in its place. Could this be she to whom he had written verses by the score, at whose smile he had swelled with pride, at whose careless laugh he had trembled with shame? She was terribly changed, she looked positively old--what John called old. As he sat by her side talking and wondering whether he would fall back into those same grooves of conversation he had associated with her formerly, he felt something akin to pity for her, which he had certainly never expected to feel. She was not the same as before--even the tone of her voice was different; she was gentle, pathetic, endowed even now with many charms, but she was not the woman he had dreamed of and tried to speak to of the love he fancied was in his heart. She talked--yes; but there were long pauses, and her eyes wandered strangely from him, often towards the windows of the vicarage drawing-room, often towards the doors; her answers were not always to the point and her interest seemed to flag in what was said. John could not fail to notice too that both Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Juxon treated her with the kind of attention which is bestowed upon invalids, and the vicar's wife was constantly doing something to make her comfortable, offering her a footstool, shading the light from her eyes, asking if she felt any draught where she sat. These were things no one had formerly thought of doing for Mrs. Goddard, who in spite of her sad