Deborah admitted, "but she fully expected to be.
He did not treat her honorably; there is no doubt of that. But her
affections were unalterably his."

"How do you know that?" demanded her nephew.

"Why, my dear child," said Miss Ruth, "there is no doubt of it. Adele
Dale told dear Deborah the whole story. Of course she had it from Lois."

"Not that it makes the slightest difference in my position," Gifford
thought, as he sat crowding down the pain of it, and looking at Lois,
sitting in the rosy light of the window of the left transept. "I am just
where I was before, and I'll tell her, if it does not seem to bother
her."

After church, there was the usual subdued gossip about the door, and
while Gifford waited for his aunts, who had something to say to the
rector, he listened to Mrs. Dale, who said in her incisive voice, "Isn't
it too bad Helen isn't here? I should think, whether she wanted to or
not, she'd come for her husband's sake." Even the apology of death had
not made Mrs. Dale pardon John Ward.

But Mr. Dale mildly interjected,--"She would stay away for his sake, if
she did not really want to come."

To which Mrs. Dale responded, "Fudge!"

Miss Deborah also spoke of her absence to Lois. "Sorry dear Helen is not
here, but of course Gifford will see her to-night. He does so enjoy his
evenings with her. Well, they are both young--and I have my thoughts!"

So, with the utmost innocence, Miss Deborah had planted the seeds of
hopelessness and jealousy in the hearts of both these young people.
Gifford spent the rest of the long, still Sunday wandering restlessly
through the house, and changing his mind about speaking to Lois every few
minutes. Lois was very distant that evening at the rectory, so Gifford
talked mostly to Helen. There was no chance to say what he had intended,
and he made none.

"Well," he said to himself as he went home, not caring to stay and talk
to Helen when Lois had gone to church,--"well, it is all a muddle. I
don't understand about there being no engagement, but I cannot help
remembering that she cared, though I have no business to. And she cares
yet. Oh, what a confounded idiot I am!"

He told his aunts he was going to make an early start the next morning.
"I shall be off before you are up. I guess Sarah will give me something
to eat. And, aunt Deborah, I don't know that I can get over next week."

The little ladies protested, but they were secretly very proud that his
business sho