Honor sat as most of us do very often in our lives, with the same smile on her face which had absolved Guy at parting. If we meet a friend and are pleased, the smile of recognition lingers on our faces long after he has passed. If we have heard a pleasant word, the gratification is evident on our countenances, long after the words have died; and the same with unpleasant or sorrowful things. I suppose our memory is necessarily a slow faculty, and only revives the expression of our emotion just as that caused by the first experience is dying away. Any one could tell by Honor's face, that she was thinking of pleasant things. Thence we may know it was no 'clairvoyant' tendency on the part of Mr. Rayne, that on entering the room the ne moment, he exclaimed: "So you're spinning your threads in the sunlight, my pet, are you?" Honor started--"Sunlight? Yes, I think the sun will be up presently." "Oh, you distracted child! I am talking of the sunlight of your thoughts." Here both joined in a hearty laugh, and Mr. Rayne having thrown aside the well dissected _Citizen_, re-deposited himself in the arm-chair by Honor's side. He came too to make hay while the sun shone, and the smile on Honor's face indicated that much. "You see, that fellow Guy interrupted us just in the beginning of our discourse--but perhaps it was just as well, for something has since happened that throws a new light on the subject. With this morning's mail came a document from Turin to me, from your father's bankers, Honor. It seems from the copy of an original letter written by your father, that he wished to test my friendship by holding me responsible for his daughter's welfare and comfort, and he therefore apparently represented you to me as entirely dependent on my bounty. Even as such, it was an immense gratification to me to take you, and at the risk of all I own nou I could not let you go, but it seems your diplomatic father--and my best friend--had arranged it so, that if, after a short period, I had performed the duties of a true friend towards you, supplying you with the necessary comforts and wants out of my own pocket, that on your birthday at the end of that time, which is to-day, this document should be forarded to me. The surprising and intensely gratifying news concerns only you, it makes not the slightest matter to me," and so speaking, he handed her the least formidable looking letter of a pile of correspondence. She read it with dilated eyes and confused look generally, and laid it down only with this difference actually to her, that she had in her own realization, in one short moment been suddenly transformed from Mr. Rayne's dependent waif into a richly endowed heiress, independent and free. A small change indeed for Honor Edgeworth. It had not power to chisel in finer style the features of her handsome face, nor the power to direct into her heart a purer, holier or more worthy sense of duty than already reigned there. No, it could make her no better.