There was but little chance for Aunt Betsy to be detected, for Helen, supposing the room to be in order, had dismissed it from her mind, and was training a rose over a frame, while Katy was on her way to Linwood in quest of various little things which Mrs. Lennox considered indispensable to the entertainment of a man like Wilford Cameron. Morris was out on his piazza, enjoying the fine prospect he had of the sun shining across the pond, on the Silverton hill, and just gilding the top of the little church nestled in the valley. At sight of Katy he rose and greeted her with the kind, brotherly manner now habitual with him, for he had learned to listen quite calmly while Katy talked to him, as she often did, of Wilford Cameron, never trying to conceal from him how anxious she was for some word of remembrance, and often asking if he thought Mr. Cameron would ever write to her. It was hard at first for Morris to listen, and harder still to keep back the passionate words of love trembling on his lips—to refrain from asking her to take him in Cameron’s stead—him who had loved her so long. But Morris had kept silence, and as the weeks went by there came insensibly into his heart a hope, or rather conviction, that Wilford Cameron had forgotten the little girl who might in time turn to him, gladdening his home just as she did every spot where her fairy footsteps trod. Morris did not fully know that he was hugging this fond dream until he felt the keen pang which cut like a dissector’s knife as Katy, turning her bright, eager face up to him, whispered softly, “He’s coming to-morrow—he surely is; I have his letter to tell me so.” Morris could not see the sunshine upon the distant hills, although it lay there just as purple and warm as it had a moment before. There was an instant of darkness, in which the hills, the pond, the sun-setting, and Katy seemed a great way off to Morris, trying so hard to be calm, and mentally asking for help to do so. But Katy’s hat, which she swung in her hand, had become entangled in the vines encircling one of the pillars of the piazza, and so she did not notice him until all traces of his agitation were past, and he could talk with her concerning Wilford; then playfully lifting her basket he asked what she had come to get.