of making things look brighter than they are. Dear Clifford has been your only comfort!”

“Come hither, Phoebe,” suddenly cried her cousin Clifford, who had said very little all the morning. “Close! — closer! — and look me in the face!”

Phoebe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might peruse it as carefully as he would.

It is probable that the latent emotions of this parting hour had revived, in some degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled faculties. At any rate, Phoebe soon felt that, if not the profound insight of a seer, yet a more than feminine delicacy of appreciation, was making her heart the subject of its regard. A moment before, she had known