"I always have breakfast with the children." He looked askance. "At seven o'clock," she vouchsafed. "By Jove!" was all he could gasp in his delirium. "That's father's door at the end of the hall. Come in there when you are ready. I'll be with him. Don't be long. Your room is here." He watched her until she closed her father's door behind her. Then he went into the sweet little bedroom across the hall, sat down rather heavily upon the edge of a couch, pulled his collar away from his throat as if that act were necessary to let the blood back from his head, and murmured over and over again, in the haziest manner imaginable: "Who would have thought it could come like this? Who would have dreamed it?" * * * * * Eleven o'clock that night. A fire in the library grate; logs crackling and the sap singing; the smell of live wood burning; the musketry of popping sparks; the swirl of smoke into the drafty chimney. New logs had just found their place of duty upon the half-starved fire behind the ancient "dogs." A sturdy poking had put life into the lazy embers. It was high time, indeed. For an hour the fire had gone neglected, unheeded. The chill of a bitter night had come creeping into the room, slowly conquering the warmth that had reigned supreme. Outside the wind had begun to whistle with a wilder glee; the creeking of wagon-wheels on the frozen roadway grew louder and more angrily insistent; a desolate cornet, far off in the Christmas air, sobbed its pathetic song to the fickle ear of the night. Two sentinels had stood watch over the fire for hours. It died as they watched it, and yet they did not see. Not unlike another fire, a week old and long since dead, was this one, and not unlike the soft glow of another fire-light was that which played on the serene faces of the two sentinels who sat side by side and watched their charge eke out its life. But on that other night these sentinels were not lovers. She shivered. He had been telling her of the world that was ahead of them and of all the joys it was to hold for him. He had told her that he would care for her all his life--that he would take care of her to the end of hers. It was then that she smiled fairly, a dear little pucker coming between her eyes. "I know, Bosworth, dear," she said quaintly, "but would you mind taking a little care of me now? I am freezing. Please poke up the fire." It was not until then that the fireplace renewed its roar of gladness, supported by his tardy but vigorous conscience. Together they stood before the resulting blaze. Her hands were in his, clasped close to his breast. Her eyes were closed. He kissed the lids. [Illustration: "Her eyes were closed. He kissed the lids."] "Fourteen years is a long time, Bosworth, dear, for two people to love each other without knowing it," she said, ever so softly, freeing one hand only that it might be slipped up to his cheek and then to his hair. THE END