extremest grave reserve, but graceful to a point. He was pretty good help. Wych Hazel did not, it is true, see very much of him; the short days were full of business in the Hollow and he could not always get away; however he managed to come to dinner several times that week. And then he was full of talk and interest, full of quiet care and attention, but as calm and unconscious, seemingly, as if he had never heard of his wedding day. Only, Wych Hazel felt more and more in his manner that quality of reverential tenderness, which is the crowning grace a man can shew to a woman, and which a man never shews to any woman but one. It marks her as invested with a kind of halo in his eyes; as sacred and separate from the common world for evermore; while it is itself a sort of glory of division between her an them, even in the apprehension of the same world. CHAPTER XXIII. FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. The sun of that short Christmas day was already dipping behind the tall Chickaree woods, laying bars of light and threads of gold where once green leaves had been, when Dr. Maryland's little sleigh came jingling up the long hill road to the door of the house. There had been a heavy fall of snow two days before, and wanderings and rides—and everything but sleighing—had been effectually stopped. Only the doctor and his two daughters were in the sleigh; for Dr. Arthur was helping his friend in the Hollow, to appear with him by and by at dinner-time. But this day Wych Hazel did not come running to meet them, as sometimes. The ladies were ushered and waited on by Phoebe in one of the state rooms; and Dr. Maryland was taken care of in another to match, so full of wax candles and firelight and cheval glasses, that whether it was himself or the attendant that confronted him at every turn, the doctor could hardly tell. For though there was lingering sunlight still out of doors, shutters were closed and candles lighted all over the house, in every open room but Wych Hazel's own. In her special room of rooms and retreat of retreats upstairs, the afternoon sun came glinting in as long as it would, and for a successor had only the twilight. And there she knelt by the window, gazing out on the fired tree tops, and the gathering shades, till she heard the sleigh bells come. Yes, till she heard the steps go down the staircase, and the door of the great drawing-room open and close behind her guests. O if Mr. Falkirk was there! she thought. And then came Phoebe with a message, to know if Mrs. Boërresen might see her. Gyda was at once asked to come upstairs. Hazel met her standing, in the middle of the room. It was in half gloom by this time; but even by the faint light Hazel could see the glitter of the embroidery on the Norwegian jacket. Gyda was in great state. The fair, mild, old face Hazel could not well see; the voice was its fit interpreter. Gyda came forward and kissed her hand. 'How is my dear lad's lady to-night?'