"A merry Christmas, Bonnibel, and many happy returns of the day."

Bonnibel Vere, lying helplessly on the sofa in her dressing-room, looked up with a start of surprise.

Felise Herbert was entering with her cat-like steps and a deceitful smile wreathing her thin lips.

"Thank you, Felise," she answered wearily, "though your wishes can scarcely bear fruit to-day."

"Are you suffering so much pain to-day?" asked Felise, dropping into an easy-chair and resting her head with its crown of dark braids against its violet velvet lining.

"My ankle is rather painful."

"We are going to have a few friends to dine with us to-day—Colonel Carlyle is among them—and we thought—mother and I—that you might be well enough to come down into the drawing-room," said the visitor, watching the invalid keenly under her drooping lashes.

But the feverish flush on the girl's cheek did not deepen under the jealous scrutiny of the watcher. She watched with a sigh of positive relief.

"Many thanks, but it is not possible for me to do so, Felise; Doctor Graham said that I must remain closely confined to my sofa at least two weeks. And indeed I could not leave it if I tried. My foot is much swollen and I cannot stand at all."

She pushed out the little member from under the skirt of her warm white wrapper, and Felise saw that she spoke truly.

She rose and came nearer under pretense of examining it.

"Why, what a pretty little ring you wear—is it a new one?" said she suddenly, and in an instant she had dexterously slipped it off Bonnibel's finger, and, holding it up, read the inscription within, "Mizpah!" "Why, how romantic! Is it a love token, Bonnibel?"

Bonnibel's lips were quivering like a grieved child's, and quick tears sprang into her eyes.

"Felise," she said, reproachfully, "you should not have taken[Pg 35] it off. I never meant for that ring to leave my finger while I lived, never!"

Felise laughed—a low, sneering laugh—and tossed her jetty braids.

"Here, take your ring," she said scornfully; "I did not know you were going to be such a baby over it. It must have been the gift of a lover to be so highly prized—perhaps it was given you by Leslie Dane."

Bonnibel slipped the ring back on her tapering third finger, while a hot flush mounted to her brow.

"You seem very curious over my ring, Felise," she said, angrily. "I do not suppose it can matter to you at all who the giver may be."

"Oh! not in the least," said Felise, airily. "I beg your pardon for teasing you about it. But if someone should give me a prettier ring than that soon I should not mind telling you the donor. And by the way," said she, walking to the window and peering out through the lace curtains, "you must tell me, Bonnibel, how you liked Colonel Carlyle the other day."

"I should be very ungrateful if I did not like him very well," said the girl, simply. "He was very good to me."

"That is an evasive answer," said Felise, laughing. "Should you have liked him if you had not been prompted thereto by gratitude?"

"I am sure I do not know. I was suffering such acute pain I hardly thought of him until he told me he had been an intimate friend of my papa while in the army. And he praised papa so highly I could not choose but like him for his words."

"The cunning old fox," said Felise to herself, while she drew her black brows angrily together. "Already he has been trying to find the way to her heart."

"He is rather fine-looking for one who is certainly no longer young—don't you think so, Bonnibel?" pursued the wily girl.

"Certainly," said Bonnibel, willing to praise Colonel Carlyle because she thought it would please Felise; "he does not seem so very old, and he is quite handsome and stately-looking."

Whatever Felise might have replied to this was interrupted by the entrance of Lucy, Bonnibel's maid. A broad smile lighted her comely, good-natured features at the sight of the visitor.

"For you, miss,"............