Hilary Leaf, down, secretly, on your heart's lowest knees, and thank God! Repent of all your bitterness, doubts, and pains; be joyful, be joyful! But, oh, remember to be so humble withal. She was. As she walked silently along by Robert Lyon's side, she pulled down her veil to hide the sweetest, most contrite, most child-like tears. What did she deserve, more than her neighbors, that she should be so very, very happy? And when, a good distance across the park, she saw the dark, solitary figure of Elizabeth carrying baby, she quietly guided her companions into a different path, so as to avoid meeting, lest the sight of her happiness might in any way, hurt poor Elizabeth. "I only landed last night at Southampton," Mr. Lyon explained to Miss Leaf, after the fashion people have, at such meetings, of falling upon the most practical and uninteresting details. "I came by the Overland Mail. It was a sudden journey, I had scarcely more than a few hours' notice. The cause of it was some very unpleasant defalcations in our firm." Under any other circumstances Hilary might have smiled; maybe she did smile, and tease him many a time afterward, because the first thing he could find to talk about, after seven years' absence, was "defalcations in our firm. But now she listened gravely, and by-and-by took her part in the unimportant conversation which always occurs after such a meeting as this. "Were you going home, Miss Leaf? They told me at your house you were expected to dinner. May I come with you? for I have only a few hours to stay. To-night I must go on to Liverpool." "But we shall hope soon to see you again?" "I hope so. And I trust, Miss Leaf, that I do not intrude to-day." He said this with his Scotch shyness, or pride, or whatever it was; so like his old self, that it made somebody smile! But somebody loved it. Somebody lifted up to his face eyes of silent welcome; sweet, soft, brown eyes, where never, since he knew them, had he seen one cloud of anger darken, one shadow of unkindness rise. "This is something worth coming home to," he said in a low voice, and not over lucidly. Ay, it was. "I am by no means disinterested in the matter of dinner, Miss Leaf; for I have no doubt of finding good English roast beef and plum pudding on your sister's birth day.--Happy returns of the day, Miss Hilary." She was so touched by his remembering this, that, to hide it, she put on a spice of her old mischievousness, and asked him if he was aware how old she was? "Yes; you are thirty; I have known you for fifteen years." "It is a long time," said Johanna, thoughtfully. Johanna would not have been human had she not been a little thoughtful and silent on the way home, and had she not many times, out of the corners of her eyes, sharply investigated Mr. Robert Lyon.