"My little mother," he replied, tenderly, "don't think that your teachings all the past years or the lessons of your own sweet life were lost in those two years; their influence lived even when memory had failed." He bent and kissed her, then added: "She was scarcely more than a child; not so brilliant, perhaps, as Marion, but beautiful, good, and pure as the driven snow." Hearing his father's voice outside, Darrell rose and, picking up his journal, opened it at the story of his love and Kate's. Then placing it open upon a table beside his mother, he said,-- "There, mother, is the story of my Dream-Love, as I call her. Read it, and if you should wish to know anything further regarding it, ask my father, for he knows all." _Chapter XXXII_ MARION HOLMES The following day when Darrell entered his mother's rooms he found her with his journal lying open before her. Looking up with a smile, she said,-- "Darrell, my dear, I would like to meet your 'Kathie,' but that can never be in this world. But you will meet her again, and when you do, give her a mother's love and blessing from me." Then, laying her hand on his arm, she added: "I understand now your question regarding Marion. As I told you, it is difficult to judge anything about her real feelings. For the first year after you went away she came often to see me and frequently inquired for tidings of you, but this last year she has seemed different. She has come here less frequently and seldom referred to you, and appeared so engrossed in her studies I concluded she had little thought or care for you. I may have misjudged her, but even were that so and she did care for you still, you would not marry her now, loving another as you do, would you?" Darrell smiled as he met his mother's eager, questioning gaze. "If I had won the love of a girl like Marion Holmes," he said, "I would do nothing that would seem like trifling with that love; but, in justice to all parties concerned, herself in particular, I would never marry her without first giving her enough knowledge of the facts in the case that she would thoroughly understand the situation." His mother seemed satisfied. "Marion has brains, whether she has a heart or not," she replied, with quiet emphasis; "and a girl of brains would never marry a man under such circumstances." Handing him his journal she pointed with a smile to its inscription. "'Until the day break,'" she quoted; "that has been my daily watchword all these years; strange that you, too, should have chosen it as your own." Had Darrell gone to his aunt for a gauge of Marion Holmes's feelings towards himself she could have informed him more correctly than his mother. She, with an old love hidden so deeply in her heart that no one even suspected its existence, understood the silent, reticent girl far better than her emotional, demonstrative sister.