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LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES

particularly. As for Mr. Ollamoor, he had been absent almost as long as Ned—she did not know where. She would gladly marry Ned now if he were to ask her again, and be a tender little wife to him till her life’s end.

A tide of warm feeling must have surged through Ned Hiperoft’s frame on receipt of this news, if we may judge by the issue. Unquestionably he loved her still, even if not to the exclusion of every other happiness. This from his Car'line, she who had been dead to him these many years, alive to him again as of old, was in itself a pleasant, gratifying thing. Ned had grown go resigned to, or aatisfied with, his lonely lot, that he probably would not have shown much jubilation at anything, Still, a certain ardor of preoccupation, after hig firat surprise, revealed how deeply her confession of faith in him had stirred him. Measured and methodical in his ways, he did not answer the letter that day, nor the next, nor the next. He was having “a good think.” When he did answer it, there was a great deal of sound reasoning mixed in with the unmistakable tenderness of his reply; but the tenderness itself was sufficient to reveal that he was pleased with her straightforward frankness; that the anchorage she had once obtained in his heart was renewable, if it had not been continuously firm,

He told her—and aa he wrote his lips twitched humorously over the few gentle words of raillery he indited among the rest of his sentences——that it was all very well for her to come round at this time of day. Why wouldn't she have him when he wanted herf She had no doubt learned that he was not married, but suppose his affections bad since been fized on another ? She ought to beg hie pardon, Still, he was not the man to forget her, But, considering how he had been used, and what he had suffered, she could not quite expect him to