“Yes, I will obey her summons,” he said, with a sigh, as he folded the tiny sheet, carefully replaced it in its envelope, and then returned it to that inner pocket near his heart. “I will go to her; I will look into her deep, clear eyes and fair, beautiful face once more; I will touch her soft hand once again, even if it be in a long farewell. I shall hear her speak my name, and then I will go away from her forever. To stay where I should be sure to meet her, even once in a while, and perhaps to see her happy in the love of another, would be more pain than I could bear. “But, oh, my darling!” he cried, in a voice of anguish, “if only this terrible blight need not have come upon me—if I might but have won you, there would have come a day when I could have given you such a position as—but, ah! why do I indulge in such vain dreamings?—it can never be, and God alone can help me to bear the dread future.” Yet notwithstanding his despair of never being anything but an object of pity to the woman whom he idolized, those last two months of his stay were the brighter for the coming of that little white-winged messenger which Editha had sent him, and which day and night lay above his heart. “Earle will be free the twenty-third—Christmas comes two days later. I will have the papers conveying Uncle Richard’s bequest made out and all ready, and he shall have it for a Christmas gift, if I can get papa’s consent.” Thus Editha planned as the month of December came in cold and wintry, and growing more and more impatient with every succeeding day. “Papa has been more kind to me of late—I do not believe but that I can persuade him to sign the papers, and then I will ask Earle to eat the Christmas goose with us. I will make everything so lovely and cheerful that he will forget those dreary walls and the long, long months he has been so cruelly detailed there.” But she realized, even as she mused and planned thus, that she would doubtless have trouble regarding these matters; and yet she hoped against hope. “Papa _cannot_ be so cruel. I shall get Mr. Felton to intercede for me—it is such a little sum compared with the whole, and the money would do Earle so much good; it will help him to hold up his head until he gets nicely started in business for himself. I wonder if he is changed much?” she went on, with heightened color and a quickly beating heart, as she remembered the strong, proud face, with its dark, handsome eyes, the tender yet manly mouth, which used to part into such a luminous smile whenever he looked up to her. “I wonder if he has liked my flowers?—how fond of them he always was! I will have them everywhere about the house on Christmas Day. There shall be no other guests except Mr. Felton; I will coax papa to let me have it all my own way for once, and I will try and make Earle forget.”