At last it was Alice’s turn to speak, hers the task to comfort. The prayer she had inwardly breathed for guidance to act aright had not been unheard, and with a strange calmness she arose, and laying her hand on Hugh’s arm, bade him be seated, while she told him what she had to say. He obeyed her, sinking into the offered chair, and then standing before him, she began, “You do not wish me to go away, you say. I have no desire to go, except it should be better for you. Even though I may not be your wife, I can, perhaps, minister to your happiness; and, Hugh, we will forget to-night, and be to each other what we were before, brother and sister. There must be no particular perceptible change of manner, lest others should suspect what has passed between us. Do you agree to this?” He bowed his head, and Alice drew a step nearer to him, hesitating a moment ere she continued. “You speak of a rival. But believe me, Hugh, you have none, there is not a man in the wide world whom I like as much as I do you, and Hugh——” the little hand pressed more closely on Hugh’s shoulder, while Alice’s breath came heavily, “And, Hugh, it may be, that in time I can conscientiously give you a different answer from what I did to-night. I may love you as your wife should love you; and—and, if I do, I’ll tell you so at the proper time.” There was a gleam of sunshine now to illumine the thick darkness, and, in the first moments of his joy Hugh wound his arm around the slight form, and tried to bring it nearer to him. But Alice stepped back and answered, “No, Hugh, that would be wrong. It may be I shall never come to love you save as I love you now, but I’ll try—I will try,” and unmindful of her charge to him Alice parted the damp curls clustering around his forehead, and looked into his face with an expression which made his heart bound and throb with the sudden hope, that even now she loved him better than she supposed. It was growing very late, and the clock in the adjoining room struck one ere Alice bade Hugh good night, saying to him, “No one must know of this. We’ll be just the same to each other as we have been.” “Yes, just the same, if that can be,” Hugh answered, and so they parted, Alice to her room, where, in the solitude, she could pray for that guidance without which she was nothing, and Hugh to his, where he, too, prayed, this night with a greater earnestness than ever he had done before—not for Golden Hair to come back, as of old, but that he might be led into the path she trod, and so be worthy of her, should the glad time ever come when she might be his. Hugh had not yet learned the faith which asks for good, that God shall be glorified rather than our own desires fulfilled; but he who prays, ever so imperfectly, is better for it, because the very act of praying implies a faith in somebody to hear; and so soothed into comparative quiet by the petition offered, Hugh fell into a quiet slumber, and slept on undisturbed until Muggins came to wake him.