big thing she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those warm cheeks, and something so kind about her from head to foot. She put down the candle and, instead of going into explanations, bent over and gave me a good hug. And I said, hugging back: 'You better had, you horrid thing! You better had!' Then she sat down on the bed. 'Hat,' she said, 'I was going to do a mean thing, but I'm not going to do it. I was going to slip away without a word, but I'm going to tell you the whole story. I'm going to marry Gerald,' she said. "Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn't say one word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love, and what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn't want to. She told me how they'd decided it would be just as well not to wait, but take a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she'd feel they must have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she should have to have a trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and Gerald would so hate the fuss and the chatter. So they'd made up their minds to go off to Leghorn without a word to anybody,--whose business is it anyhow but their own?--and be married just as soon as it could be done, where they wouldn't get so much as the echo of any remarks on their haste or the way they preferred to do. She'll be staying with Mrs. Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from there. Then she showed me Gerald's ring that she'd been wearing on a chain round her neck where I wouldn't see it, and she talked about Gerald's wonderfulness. She's perfectly wrapped up in him. All I hope is he appreciates it." "His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her." "You're right. I guess it's as bad with him as with her. She talked about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with Gerald in a garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they're both crazy. What do you think she gave as one reason for this haste? 'Life is short,' she said, 'and love is long!' Gerald must have said it to her before she said it to me, but what do you think of it? 'Life is short and love is long!'" "Do you mean"--asked Leslie, with the least touch of severity,--"that I ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I can't, my dear Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their quiet way they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life." "Yes, of course," said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of shame. "My father and mother, too, make a united couple."