I have always known theoretically that happiness was becoming; and I have always thought Barbara most fair. "Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well, Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn, Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed," but _now_, what a lovely brightness, like that of clouds remembering the gone sun, shines all about her! What a radiant laughter in her eyes! What a splendid carnation on her cheeks! (How glad I am that I did not tell!) "Do I?" she says, softly, and hiding her face, with the action of a shy child, on my shoulders. "I dare say." "_Good_ Heavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before, and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation. "And _you_?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "and _you_? you are pleased too, are not you?" "Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the forenoon, "_delighted_! I never was so pleased in my life. I told you so in my letters, did not I?" A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment. "Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again. I thought that you--would have such a--such a great deal to say about it." "So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is--it is difficult to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself, was I?" We have sat down. I am not facing her. With a complexion that serves one such ill turns as mine does, one is not over-fond of _facing_ people. I am beside her. For a moment we are both silent. "Well," say I, presently, with an unintentional tartness in my tone, "why do not you begin? I am waiting to hear all about it! Begin!" So Barbara begins. "I am afraid," she says, smiling all the while, but growing as red as the bunch of late roses in my breast, "that I looked horribly _pleased_! One ought to look as if one did not care, ought not one?" "Ought one?" say I, with interest, then beginning to laugh vociferously. "At least you were not as bad as the old maid who late in life received a very wealthy offer, and was so much elated by it that she took off all her clothes, and kicked her bonnet round the room!" Barbara laughs. "No, I was not quite so bad as that." "And how did he do it?" pursue I, inquisitively. "Did he write or speak" "He spoke." "And what did he say? How did he word it? Ah!"--(with a sigh)--"I suppose you will not tell me _that_?" She has abandoned her chair, and has fallen on her knees before me, hiding her face in my lap. Delicious waves of color, like the petals of a pink sweet-pea, are racing over her cheeks and throat. "Was ever any one known to tell it?" she says, indistinctly.