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 ever, if only—if only he didn't think of her eyes, or her hair, or how her lips had felt that night, or would feel, if. . . They were curved now in one of her kindest smiles for him, and her blue eyes were shrouded in a sort of soft gray mist as she said, 'When you first suggested coming to see me last fall, I was afraid it might make me less able to do my duty happily here, but it hasn't. It doesn't. I wanted to tell you so. You make the burdens I have to carry seem lighter.'

'That's all I want to do,' he said—he lied. He wanted terribly to take her in his arms!

It was far from his intention to do so, however. All winter he maintained his relationship to Sheilah as safe and wise friend—as safe and wise professional advisor. For thus he became; as her lawyer, looking over the property left her by her mother, and reinvesting it for her; discovering among the slender packet of papers certain securities once given her father, which Sheilah had been told were worthless; and to her amazement turning them into a source of steady income for her. Not much. A few hundred dollars a year, but enough to insure boarding-school later for Roddie as well as for Laetitia. Cicely was helping with Laetitia. Cicely had sailed for Europe just before Christmas, but her generous check for