“Pray, what are you thinking of?” Denham asked suddenly one day, turning to her with his bright, sweet smile.  “You have been quiet for very long.”

“So have you been quiet,” returned Phebe.  “I do not think I have been any less talkative than you.”

“Perhaps not,” said Denham.  “We are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not?  But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe.  Tell me, what were you thinking of?”

“I don’t quite know,” answered Phebe, slowly.  “But I think I was wishing for impossibilities,—­for things that can’t possibly happen, just because it would be so nice if they could.”

“Ah,” said Halloway, dreamily.  “That is a very bad habit, a frightfully unsatisfactory, delusive, and, indeed, an altogether pernicious habit, Miss Phebe.  It takes the taste out of every thing solid, and leaves one an appetite only for indigestible sweets.  I must correct you of it.  I will, just as soon, that is, as I have broken myself of it.  Will you wait till I have taken myself in hand?”

They were together sitting in a little recess of the rectory parlor, while Mrs. Whittridge and Gerald were talking at the farther end of the room.  Soeur Angelique had invited the two girls to tea, and Halloway, when he came in from his study, seated himself at once by Phebe, though after his warm greeting and self-congratulations upon having her back in her old haunts, he had fallen into quite an unusual silence.  Phebe was looking very sweet and fresh that afternoon.  All the care that she had meant to devote to her toilet upon the occasion of her first meeting with Halloway, she had expended in dressing herself for this visit to the rectory.  Never had her shining hair been braided so glossily, or coaxed into waving more prettily about her forehead; never had the simple etceteras of her dress been more studiously selected and more carefully put together.  Looking in the glass when all was done, she had been fain to confess that she really did look nice for once, though she reproached herself immediately afterward in severest terms for the unpardonable vanity of the thought, and made a little grimace at her own image to effectually dispel the illusion.  What could it ever matter how she looked?  And particularly how could it matter when Gerald was by,—­Gerald, who possessed that rare and enviable gift of always looking her best?  So Phebe put the subject of her looks entirely away from her mind, and leaned back on the sofa, her hands folded idly in her lap, feeling perfectly content with the passing moment, and asking nothing from the future but that it might be always “now.”  What more could she want?  The room held her three dearest friends in the world,—­Gerald, Soeur Angelique, and Mr. Halloway;—­of course one should always put ladies before gentlemen even only in thought.  How handsome Gerald looked as she stood with her head slightly bent forward, listening to Mrs. Whittridge.  If Gerald did not choose to listen, no one could ever force her to lend an ear.  But when she did so choose, she listened with her whole mind, and was lost to all else.  Phebe smiled with quiet amusement at her friend’s intensity in every thing, and turned with the smile on her face to Halloway.  He was not smiling at all, but he too was looking fixedly at Gerald.