Queenie was weaving all manner of pure womanish fancies as Garth went back through the rain. The young man's pulses still throbbed with excitement. His sluggish imagination had been quickened and stirred within him; he felt with a curious, indefinable sensation that he had drifted long enough down the tide of circumstance, and that his fate approached a crisis. Would it be different to what he had planned all these years? And that night he thought less of Dora. How inexplicable are the ways of mankind, even the best of them. Garth, with all his uprightness and integrity, failed to see that his conduct lay open to questioning when, after this evening, he began to haunt the cottage. He was only seeking solace and forgetfulness, a healing compensation for the hurt under which he still smarted at intervals; but he had no idea that such self-indulgence might be fraught with peril to another's peace! Queenie could not tell him if the intercourse between them were too pleasant to be perfectly harmless. The fault lay with him, not her. It was not for her to receive her benefactor coldly; and then if she could do him good. It was true Garth seldom came alone, either Cathy or Langley or Ted were with him; but the invitations to Church-Stile House became more frequent and pressing. "Garth likes to see you and Emmie amongst us of an evening," Cathy said to her more than once. "You know what men are, my dear; they get tired of their sisters' company, and then Dora is away. I suppose that makes him so discontented and restless. Poor Florence is worse, and there is no possibility of Dora's return at present." "So your brother informed me," returned Queenie demurely; but not to Cathy did she dare hint that Miss Cunningham's absence was a relief. She was somewhat afraid of questioning her own feelings too closely at this time. The incubus that had weighed upon her spirits was removed, at least temporarily. Life was passing pleasantly with her just now; she had work enough to occupy her; a pretty cottage where she and Emmie lived like disguised princesses, and friends whom she loved and trusted to brighten her leisure hours. "Shall I ever be so happy again in my life?" she said once to Cathy. "I think this summer is the sunniest I have ever known. When one is so thoroughly satisfied one dreads a change." "I like change," returned Cathy, boldly. "I think a long lease of monotonous happiness would stupefy me. Life is not a mere table-land; there are mountains to ascend before one can see the view, broad rivers to cross, and long deserts to traverse; he is a poor traveller who fears either." "You forget Emmie and I are already footsore with our rough pilgrimage," rejoined Queenie, with her bright quaintness. "We have been through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of Humiliation."