During the three hours that Mr. Lyon had been with her, Hilary's first agitation had subsided. That exceeding sense of rest which she had always felt beside him--the sure index of people who, besides loving, are meant to guide and help and bless one another--returned as strong as ever. That deep affection which should underlie all love revived and clung to him with a chidlike confidence strengthening at every word he said, every familiar look and way. He was by no means so composed as she was, especially now when coming up to her side and watching her hands moving for a minute or so, he asked her to tell him, a little more explicitly, of what had happened to her since they parted. "Things are rather different from what I thought;" and he glanced with a troubled air round the neat but very humbly furnished parlor. "And about the shop?" "Johanna told you." "Yes; but her letters have been so few, so short--not that I could expect more. Still--now, if you will trust me--tell me all." Hilary turned to him, her friend for fifteen years. He was that if he was nothing more. And he had been very true; he deserved to be trusted. She told him, in brief, the history of the last year or two, and then added: "But after all it is hardly worth the telling, because, you see, we are very comfortable now. Poor Ascott, we suppose, must be in Australia. I earn enough to keep Johanna and myself, and Miss Balquidder is a good friend to us. We have repaid her, and owe nobody any thing. Still, we have suffered a great deal. Two years ago; oh! it was a dreadful time." She was hardly aware of it, but her candid tell-tale face betrayed more even than her words. It cut Robert Lyon to the heart. "You suffered, and I never knew it." "I never meant you to know." "Why not?" He walked the room in great excitement. "I ought to have been told; it was cruel not to tell me. Suppose you had sunk under it; suppose you had died, or been driven to do what many a woman does for the sake of mere bread and a home--what your poor sister did--married. But I beg your pardon." For Hilary had started up with her face all aglow. "No," she cried; "no poverty would have sunk me as low as that. I might have starved, but I should never have married." Robert Lyon looked at her, evidently uncomprehending, then said humbly, though rather formally, "I beg your pardon once more. I had no right to allude to any thing of the kind." Hilary replied not. It seemed as if now, close together, they were further apart than when the Indian seas rolled between them. Mr. Lyon's brown cheek turned paler and paler; he pressed his lips hard together; they moved once or twice, but still he did not utter a word. At last, with a sort of desperate courage, and in a tone that Hilary had never heard from him in her life before, he said: