evening."

"Dear me," said Molly, looking at him. "To be sure--I'd forgotten
you're a minister." The young man looked up, instant self-arraignment
in his face, for permitting it to be forgotten.

"When do you have service?" Molly was saying. "We must come over,
Malise and I."

He told her gravely.

Mr. Jonas was standing against the gallery railing, rising and falling
on his neat little toes, the setter's eyes following his every
movement. He was facing Mrs. Garnier and her daughter, looking from
the mother, with her red-brown hair and shadowy lashes, to the girl,
quite lovely, also, when she smiled in this sweet, sudden way up at
him. She had nice hair, too, something the colour of wild honey.

"Charming women, charming women," he was summing them up.

Yet could Mr. Jonas have called to mind any women, the old or young,
the forlorn or charming, who had not moved him to chivalric emotion in
some form?

Alexina was looking up the street. Mr. Jonas turned, too, as a
wagonette, drawn by two big, iron-grey mules, swung round the corner,
a glitter of brass and a hint of red about the harness. A young fellow
on the front seat was driving; a lady sat behind.

"The finest boy and best shot in Jasmine County," said Mr. Jonas,
starting forward as the mules were reined up at the hotel entrance,
"and the foolishest, most profoundly wise mother."

Alexina was going forward, too. "We--that is, I know them," she told
him; "they are old friends, the Leroys."

For she had known Charlotte in a moment.

A darky boy lounging about came to take the mules and Willy sprang
his mother out, as lightly as ever a girl would spring, and brought
her up the steps to Alexina.

Charlotte's embrace was eager and ardent; then she cried a little,
with her face against the girl's shoulder.

"For my youth," she said the next instant, lifting her head and
smiling at the girl. "I'm almost a middle-aged woman, little Mab; I'm
nearly forty-five and I don't want to be."

Vivacity, as of old, dwelt in Charlotte's face and animated her lively
movements, but her brilliant eyes were somewhat sunken, as happens
with women of marked features and dashing beauty; the skin was growing
sallow too, and as the cheeks and temples drew in the features stood
large.

"I don't know how to grow old," said Charlotte, and truthfully, "I
don't know how to let go. I haven't the resourcefulness, or quiet, or
repose, for an old woman."

Always, 'way back as Char