It was a very pleasant, little _tableau_ that followed, those three happy souls, gathered around a well-spread table laughing and chatting merrily. Honor no longer felt any timidity or reserve before Mr. Rayne, his advanced years commanded a confidence and trust that she would have otherwise perhaps been slow to give, and the unlimited generosity he betrayed in even anticipating her every wish, gave her no opportunity to feel that she was under the patronage of a perfect stranger. He had shown himself as a kind, indulgent father from the first, and was as solicitous about her as though she had been his very own, or that he had been accustomed to administer to the wants and wishes of a young unripened girl all his life. But this is no mystery to the interpreter of the human heart. Henry Rayne could hardly act otherwise to any lone helpless creature without sacrificing the impulses of his own generous, noble soul, and trampling upon the desire that continually influenced him towards being the direct cause of happiness and comfort to others. Taking away any supernatural motive that might lead him to such generous action, yet leaves the deed a worthy one, and the heart a Christian one, for, to gratify others was to gratify himself, and this alone is characteristic of a great soul. As the orphan child of a friend of his youth, I doubt not that Henry Rayne would protect her at his life's peril. We all know what a firm knot it is that binds the sympathetic souls of rollicking college "chums" which, tied once, is tied forever. It has always been so; it is one of those strictly conservative principles that grows with mankind in every generation, and is yet never found extravagant, if not because of the noble character of the sentiment itself, at least because our forefathers never condemned it, and the world generally continues to favor such an alliance. Such was the nature of the staunch friendship that existed between Henry Rayne and Bob Edgeworth, a friendship that had only strengthened itself by pledges and vows, as the youths shook hands in a fond farewell over the threshold of their college home. From the day on which Honor Edgeworth settled in her new home, life began to assume its most indulgent phase. Everything around her met her eye for the first time, no sorrowful associations hung in misty veils over anything that entered into the charms of her new life. Nanette was the only breathing, living testimony of the years that had gone, and the home of her childhood that she had left forever. A few old books of literature and of music, a few little trifling souvenirs from her dead mother's jewel box, an inlaid mahogony writing-desk and a miniature likeness of her proud handsome father, were all the visible reminders she now held of the fair, sunny home, under the far foreign skies.