She got up and went to him, and leaned upon the table, clasping her cool, firm little hand upon his hot, desperate one. A woman of fifty could not have had the power over him that this slight, inexperienced little creature had. Her childish face caught color and life and strength in her determination to do her best for these two whom she loved so well. Her small-boned, fragile figure deceived people into undervaluing her reserve forces; but there was mature feeling and purpose enough in her to have put many a woman three times her age to shame. The light, cool touch of her hand soothed and controlled Griffith from the first, and when she put forth all her powers of reasoning, and set his trouble before him in a more practical and less headlong way, not a word was lost upon him. She pictured Dolly to him just as she had found her holding his letter in her hand, and she pictured her too as she had really been the night he watched her through the window,--not staying because she cared for Gowan, but because circumstances had forced her to remain when she was longing in her own impetuous pretty way to fly to him, and give him the comfort he needed. And she gave Dolly's story in Dolly's own words, with the little sobs between, and the usual plentiful sprinkling of sweet, foolish, loving epithets, and--with innocent artfulness--made her seem so charming and affectionate, a little centre-figure in the picture she drew, that no man with a heart in his breast could have resisted her, and by the time Aimée had finished, Grif was so far moved that it seemed a sheer impossibility to speak again of relinquishing his claims. But he could not regain his spirits sufficiently to feel able to say very much. He quieted down, but he was still down at heart and crushed in feeling, and could do little else but listen in a hopeless sort of way. “I will tell you what you shall do,” Aimée said at last. “You shall see Dolly yourself,--not on the street, but just as you used to see her when she was at home. She shall come home some afternoon. I know Miss MacDowlas will let her,--and you shall sit in the parlor together, Grif, and make everything straight, and begin afresh.” He could not help being roused somewhat by such a prospect. The cloud was lifted for one instant, even if it fell upon him again the next. “I shall have to wait a week,” he said. “Old Flynn has asked me to go to Dartmouth, to attend to some business for him, and I leave here to-morrow morning.” “Very well!” she answered. “If we must wait a week, we must; but you can write to Dolly in the interval, and settle upon the day, and then she can speak to Miss MacDowlas.” He agreed to the plan at once, and promised to write to Dolly that very night. So the young peacemaker's mind was set at rest upon this subject, at least, and after giving him a trifle more advice, and favoring him with a few more sage axioms, she prepared to take her departure.