“But,” Louie said, “my debt, and my voice, and my career?” “The debt is paid when you give yourself to me,” Fred answered. “Your voice will come back in time, and be all my own; and, as for the career, I have not the prejudice against the stage which Herbert has, but I always hoped you would be saved from it in some way. I would rather not have my wife before the footlights, for a promiscuous crowd to admire and applaud, and you are to be my wife.” He spoke both interrogatively and affirmatively, and stooped to kiss her; but she drew back from him, as she had from Herbert, and said: “I have not promised yet. I must have time to think. I must talk with Miss Percy.” Fred knew his cause was safe in that direction, and did not urge his suit further then. He felt so sure that he could wait, and when his mother and Miss Percy came from Coppet, he told them what he had done, and that he depended upon them as coadjutors, with no misgivings as to the result. CHAPTER XXIII LOUIE AND MISS PERCY It was a rather wakeful night which Louie passed, but a happy one. With Fred Lansing’s love, life, which had seemed so black and dreary, looked very bright to her, although there was a feeling of humility in her heart that her father’s debts should be paid by him. And yet the thought that it was his great love which prompted it robbed the humility of much of its bitterness, and it was a very happy young girl who went to Miss Percy the next morning as she was taking her coffee in her room. “I think I know what you have come to tell me,” Miss Percy said. “I saw Fred last night, and I am very glad. I knew it was coming long ago. You have won a noble man with, I may almost say, no faults, unless it be that he is a little too chary of his real feelings, which make him seem cold and proud when he is neither.” “But it hurts me that he should pay the debts for me when I wanted to do it myself,” Louie said. “Yes, dear, I know,” Miss Percy replied; “but God has willed it otherwise. He has taken away your voice for a time, and in its place has given you this friend to do your work for you. He often opens one door when he shuts another. He does not forget us when we feel the most alone. The mother who leaves her little child in one room while she goes into another, does not forget it. She hears its cry, and in time goes back to it full of tenderness and love for the disquiet she has caused it. So with God, he comes back to us when we have been shut in the darkest of rooms, groping blindly for a ray of light. I found it so once, when the darkness was so thick that I felt it covering me like a pall, and in the whole world there seemed nothing worth living for, because my twin-brother Brant was dead.” Louie had never seen her in such a mood before, or heard her talk in this way. She was very pale, and said her head ached; but when Louie arose to leave her she bade her stay, and said: