'I cannot help it. I was longing all the time for papa to know; and then it was all so strange, and I thought you would never come. I shall be more comfortable now,' sobbed Polly, with a girlish abandon of mingled happiness and grief. 'Directly I heard your step outside the window I made an excuse to get away to you.' 'I ought not to have left you--it was wrong; but, no, it could not be helped,' returned Mildred, in a low voice. She pressed the girl to her, and stroked the soft hair with cold, trembling fingers. 'Are those happy tears, my pet? Hush, you must not cry any more now.' 'They do me good. I felt as though I were some one else downstairs, not Polly at all. Oh, Aunt Milly, can you believe it?--do you think it is all real?' 'What is real? You have told me nothing yet, remember. Shall I guess, Polly? Is it a great secret--a very great secret, my darling?' 'Aunt Milly, as though you did not know, when he told me that you and he had had a long talk about it yesterday!' 'He--Dr. Heriot, I suppose you mean?' 'He says I must call him something else now,' returned the girl in a whisper, 'but I have told him I never shall. He will always be Dr. Heriot to me--always. I don't like his other name, Aunt Milly; no one does.' 'John--I think it beautiful!' with a certain sharp pain in her voice. She remembered how he had once owned to her that no one had called him by this name since he was a boy. He had been christened John Heriot--John Heriot Heriot--and his wife had always called him Heriot. 'Only my mother ever called me John,' he had said in a regretful tone, and Mildred had softly repeated the name after him. 'It has always been my favourite name,' she had owned with that simplicity that was natural to her; and his eyes had glistened as though he were well-pleased. 'It is beautiful; it reminds one of St. John. I have always liked it,' she said a little quickly. 'His wife called him Heriot; yes, I know, he told me--but I am so young, and he--well, he is not exactly old, Aunt Milly, but----' 'Do you love him, Polly?--child, do you really love him?' and for a moment Mildred put the girl from her with a sort of impatience and irritation of suspense. Polly's pretty face was suffused with hot blushes when she came back to her place again. 'He asked me that question, and I told him yes. How can one help it, and he so good? Aunt Milly, you have no idea how kind and gentle he was when he saw he frightened me.' 'Frightened you, my child?' 'The strangeness of it all, I mean. I could not understand him for a long time. He talked quite in his old way, and yet somehow he was different; and all at once I found out what he meant.' 'Well?' 'And then I got frightened, I suppose. I thought how could I satisfy him, and he so much older and cleverer. He is so immeasurably above all my girlish silliness, and so I could not help crying a little.' 'Poor little Polly! but he comforted you.'