destined never to forget, the lovely tints of the clear northern sky,
the broad valley of the great river, with its bounding bluffs and
hillocks, hued by the dying day, the dark forms, slender and graceful
both, coming nearer and nearer, until in startled recognition of one at
least, he halted in dumb amaze, and therefore caught but flitting
glimpse of the other as it whisked jauntily away. He had his suspicions,
strong and acute, yet with nothing tangible as yet on which to base
them, and if he breathed them, what would be the result? The girl whose
identity he had promised not to betray "until sister Naomi could be
heard from," would beyond all question be called to account. To his very
door had she come within forty-eight hours of that strange evening,
which the rector's prattle had made public property, begged a minute's
interview without giving any name, and stepping down into the plainly
furnished little western parlor, there in the dim light of a single
kerosene burner, Walter Loring had come face to face with his old
love--Geraldine.

Mindful of all the harm she had done him in San Francisco, rather than
of what had passed before, he met her in stern silence. On his
generosity, his magnanimity she threw herself. She had deceived and
wronged him in ever engaging herself to him, she said, and would have
gone on to say more. "That is all past and done with," he coldly
interposed. "What is it now?" And then it transpired that good Mr.
Lambert had been the means of securing for Naomi an excellent position,
that Naomi had gone to enter on her duties and had sent for her sister
to come and live at Mrs. Burton's until she could better provide for
her, that Naomi was living under an assumed name, and that she prayed
that no one might know their unhappy past. The interview was cut short
by the curiosity of some member of the household who came in ostensibly
to trim the lamp.

"It shall be as you wish until you hear from your sister," said Loring,
bowing her out with punctilious civility and praying in secret that
there it might end, but end it did not. Within another forty-eight hours
she was there with another quest. The servant who announced her presence
in the parlor below did so with a confidential and impertinent grin.
"The same lady wants to see Lieutenant Loring," and this time he was
colder and sterner than before. Her evident purpose was to revert to the
relations that once existed, though her plea was only for