wn--What do you--Oh, Ruth, look at me!"

She looked, very tenderly, although she said, "You forget we are
observed."

"Oh, observed! Do you mean hope--for me--after all?"

"I mean that if you will only wait until we can get a clear light on
this matter of Isabel's--which will most likely be by the next time you
come"--

"Oh, Ruth, Ruth, my own Ruth at last!"

"Please don't speak so. I'm not engaging myself to you now."

"Oh yes, you are! Yes, you are! Yes--you--are!"

"No--no--no--listen! Listen to me, Godfrey. I think that now, among us
all, we shall manage Isabel's affair well enough, and that the very next
time--you--come"--She began absently to pick her steps.

"What--what then?"

"Then you may ask me."

The response of the overjoyed lover was but one or two passionate words,
and her sufficient reply, as they halted among their fellows, was to
look across the valley with her meditative smile. Isabel took note, but
kindly gave a long sigh of admiration, and with an exalted sweep of the
hand drew the gaze of the five to the beauties of the scene below. The
day was near its end. The long shadow of the great cliff behind Bylow
Hill hung over the roofs of the town and over the hither meadows. The
sun's rays were laying their last touches upon the winding river, and
upon the grainfields that extended from its farther shore. In the upper
blue rested a few peaceful clouds, changing from silver to pink, from
pink to pearly gray, and on the skyline crouched in a purpling haze the
round-backed mountains of another county.

To Mrs. Morris and the General the sight, from the old elm-tree seat,
was even fairer than to the youthful group whose forms stood out against
the sky, the floral colors of the girls' draperies heightened by the
western light. For a while the two sitters gave the perfect scene the
tribute of a perfect silence, and then the General asked, as he
cautiously straightened his impaired frame, "Has not Isabel been making
some--eh--news for herself--and us?"

The lady's lips parted for their peculiar laugh of embarrassment, but
the questioner's smile was so serious that she forced her sweetest
gravity. "Why, General, according to our Southern ways," she
said,--every word mellowed by her Southern way of saying it,--"that's
for Isabel to tell you."

"Then why does she not do it, Mrs. Morris?" asked the veteran, who had
been district attorney himself once upon a time, and was clever with
witnesses.