Oh! if he could but break the cruel fetters that bound him—if he could but discover the real criminal, and clear his own name, then he might hope to win the respect of the world once more, fame and position, and the right to tell this gentle girl how dear she was to him. “Yes,” she returned, noticing his emphasis, and fearing she might have wounded him by wording her sentence thus; “and, Earle. I think you are very—very noble now, to bear your trouble so patiently and uncomplainingly, and something tells me that it will not be so very long before all the world will be proud to call you friend.” She spoke softly, but in a tone that thrilled him through and through. “And then——” The words came breathlessly, and before he could stop them. They would not be stayed. He bent eagerly toward her, his heart in his eyes, his face full of passion which so nearly mastered him. But he checked them, biting them off short as he had done before, but growing white even to his lips with the effort it cost him. Something in his tones made her start and look up, and she read it all as in an open book—all his love for her, all the blighted hopes of the past, the longing and bitterness of the present, wherein he writhed beneath the stigma resting upon him, and the mighty self-control which would not presume upon her sympathy. A flood of crimson suddenly dyed her face and throat, and even the soft, white hands which lay in her lap, and which were now seized with nervous trembling. Then a look of resolution gleamed in her eyes, the red lips settled into an expression of firmness, and, though her heart beat like the frightened thing it was, her sweet tones did not falter as she replied: “And then—_Editha Dalton will be very proud also_.” Was ever heaven’s music sweeter than those few low-spoken, unfaltering words? There was no mistaking them—they had been uttered with a purpose, and he knew that his love was returned. Eager brown eyes looked into tender blue for one long, delicious minute. No word was spoken, but both knew that for all time they belonged to each other. Then Earle Wayne, with a glad, though solemn light illumining his face, lifted the white hand that lay nearest him, touched it reverently with his lips, and then gently laid it back in its place. It was as though he blessed her for the hope thus delicately held out to him, but his innate nobility and self-respect would not allow him to bind her to him by so much as a word until he could stand proudly before her and offer her a name that should not have so much as the shadow of a stain upon it. CHAPTER XI THE BUNCH OF HOLLY “Silence is the perfect herald of joy; I were but little happy it I could say how much.” Words were never more applicable than these to those undeclared lovers, sitting in such a mute happiness side by side, in the little reception-room, on that bright morning so near Christmastide.