“I do like people to appear just as they are,” smiled Lady Milmo. “That is what we are working for,” said Roderick; “the return to sincerity and simple truth.” “Well, what have you to tell us?” “Good news. Raynham has come round, and will take a seat on the Council. He may get a couple more Academicians. One further item in my debt of gratitude to you, Miss Defries.” “It is very little I have been able to do,” said Ella. “I only asked Mr. Raynham to receive you. Your own earnestness and conviction won him over.” An old gentleman came up and spoke to Lady Milmo. Roderick politely yielded him his chair and took possession of a vacant one on the other side of Ella. “It is your womanly sympathy and courage all through that I have to thank; your cheering in depression, your encouragement in the face of defeat. If the star of success has arisen, it is you who have dispersed the obscuring clouds. A man may set his heart on a thing, but a woman keeps it there.” He spoke in a low voice, and Ella leaned towards him to listen. Her cheeks flushed. The flattery was sweet, and there was a subtle vibration in his voice that stirred her. “One would die if there were not something noble to live for,” said she, suddenly throwing off the stealing languor. “To rise every morning and look forward to sixteen inevitable waking hours that will not bring one throb to the pulses, one inspiring hope; to go to sleep each night feeling dull and useless, and so on for endless months and years,--it is an unlivable life. It is you I have to thank for putting an interest in my way.” “I love to hear you speak like that,” he said admiringly. “Pray God you keep your enthusiasms; There are thousands who never know the thrill. It should be part of our mission to awaken their souls. There is one friend of ours, for instance, who needs it to make him a great man. Oddly enough, I have just left him--dear old Sylvester Lanyon, you know. I found him sitting a little higher up, looking like a sick raven among birds of paradise.” Her clear girl's eyes effected feminine concealment of the old pain that every reference to Sylvester had caused her for the past year. Her heart rebelled against it, resenting the inefficacy of time to cure. Wantonly she ignored it. “I have not set eyes on him since he settled in town. He never comes to see us. He is still mourning and moping, I suppose. The world is for the living, not the dead; don't you think so?” “Yes. He should marry again. A woman of exuberant vitality, who would carry him along with her.” “We'll have to find him a wife, Mr. Usher,” she replied gaily. Thus she proved to herself defiantly that all her foolish feeling for Sylvester was dead; that she had also attained a standpoint of generous forgetfulness of wrong.