n. To know was
nothing--his heart demanded to hear the good news and to be surfeited
with hearing. But the small dragon still guarded his Hesperides, and
on the way to church he escorted Mrs. Isaiah, a matron gaunt and stern,
whose cheerful doctrine it was that any spoken word not made actually
necessary by the business of life was a sin. Mrs. Isaiah's grim
reticence was less of a trouble to him than it would have been under
ordinary circumstances, for he had his own thoughts to think, and did
not care to be drawn away from them.

At the lich-gate Aunt Rachel paused to shake hands with everybody but
Ruth and Reuben.

"You had better take Manzini home to-night, Reuben," said Ruth. She
tried hard to make her voice commonplace; but to Reuben's ears there was
a meaning in it, and his eyes answered to the meaning with such a flash
of tenderness and assured joy that, in spite of all she could do, Ruth
must needs lower her head and blush again.

Rachel's youthful eyes flashed from one to the other.

"I do not propose to attend the service this evening, Niece Ruth," she
said, a minute later, when Reuben and his _confrere_ had entered on
the cavernous darkness of the winding stairway. "I will call for you,
however," she added. "I shall be in the porch at the close of the
service."

At the first clause of this speech Ruth rejoiced, but at the second her
sense of relief was spoiled.

"Very well, dear," she answered. Aunt Rachel could not stand much longer
between her and Reuben, and if a fight should have to be made it would
be early enough to begin it when she had her father definitely on her
side, as she would have to-morrow. So she went into church and made
strenuous efforts to attend to the service and the sermon, and failed
dismally, and thought herself terribly profane.

Aunt Rachel, being left alone at the church porch, turned away and
walked straight back to the house she had left. The green door in the
high wall needed no more than a push to open it, and Rachel entered the
garden, and, walking straight to the table at which the quartette party
had sat playing an hour or two earlier, laid hands upon Manzini's volume
of duets for the violin. She took it by the back of the cover and gave
it a shake, and out from its pages fell a neatly folded little note,
addressed in her niece's hand to Mr. Reuben Gold, and sealed in bronze
wax with the impress of a rose. The little old lady pounced upon it, and
held it at arm's-le