ground on
which he walked.

Kate had noted every expression that crossed his face, absorbing him in
one comprehensive glance as he stood in the full blaze of the candles,
her gaze lingering on his mouth and laughing eyes and the soft sheen of
his brown hair, its curved-in ends brushing the high velvet collar of
his coat--and so on down his shapely body to his shapely feet. Never had
she seen him so adorable--and he was all her own, and for life!

As for our dear St. George Temple, who had never taken his eyes off
them, he thought they were the goodliest pair the stars ever shone upon,
and this his happiest night. There would be no more stumbling after
this. Kate had the bridle well in hand now; all she needed was a clear
road, and that was ahead of both horse and rider.

"Makes your blood jump in your veins, just to look at them, doesn't
it, Talbot?" cried St. George to Harry's father when Kate
disappeared--laying his hand as he spoke on the shoulder of the man with
whom he had grown up from a boy. "Is there anything so good as the love
of a good woman?--the wise old prophet places her beyond the price of
rubies."

"Only one thing, St. George--the love of a good man--one like yourself,
you dear old fellow. And why the devil you haven't found that out years
ago is more than I can understand. Here you are my age, and you might
have had a Kate and Harry of your own by this time, and yet you live a
stupid old--"

"No, I won't hear you talk so, colonel!" cried a bride of a year. "Uncle
George is never stupid, and he couldn't be old. What would all these
young girls do--what would I have done" (another love affair with St.
George as healer and mender!)--"what would anybody have done without
him? Come, Miss Lavinia--do you hear the colonel abusing Uncle George
because he isn't married? Speak up for him--it's wicked of you, colonel,
to talk so."

Miss Lavinia Clendenning, who was one of St. George's very own, in spite
of her forty-odd years, threw back her head until the feathers in her
slightly gray hair shook defiantly:

"No--I won't say a word for him, Sue. I've given him up forever. He's a
disgrace to everybody who knows him."

"Oh, you renegade!" exclaimed St. George in mock alarm.

"Yes,--a positive disgrace! He'll never marry anybody, Sue, until he
marries me. I've begged him on my knees until I'm tired, to name the
day, and he won't! Just like all you shiftless Marylanders, sir--never
know when to make up y