ime Aunt Rachel's antique griefs being out of sight for Ruth, were
out of mind. She had her own affairs to think of, and found them at once
pressing and delightful. By this time Reuben would have read her note,
and would know all it had to tell him. When she thought how much it told
him it seemed daring and strange, and almost terrible that she should
have written it. For it admitted that his letter had made her very
happy; she was not quite sure that she had not written "very, very
happy," and wished it were to write again. But here in the solitude
of her own chamber she could kiss Reuben's letter, and could rest it
against her hot cheek in an ecstasy of fluttering congratulations. How
he looked, how he walked, how he talked, how he smiled, how he played!
How brave, how handsome, how altogether noble and good and gifted he
was! There was nobody to compare with him in Heydon Hay, and the young
men of Castle Barfield were contemptible by comparison with him. A
human sun before whose rays other young women's luminaries paled like
rush-lights! She seemed to have loved him always, and always to have
been sure that he loved her; and yet it was wonderful to know it, and
strange beyond strangeness to have told. She fancied him in the act of
reading her letter, and she kissed his as she did so. Did he kiss hers?
Was he as glad as she was? At these audacious fancies she hid herself
and blushed.

Reuben all this while, and until a much later hour, was bewildering
himself about the curious and old-fashioned missive he had discovered
between the melodious pages of Manzini. Over and over again he searched
through the volume, though he had already turned it leaf by leaf and
knew that there was no chance of his having overlooked anything. Almost
as often as he turned over the leaves of the music-book he reread the
note he had taken from it. He questioned himself as to the possibility
of his having allowed Ruth's note to fall, and mentally retraced his own
fashion of taking up the book, and step by step the way in which he had
carried it home. He was sure that nothing could have escaped from its
pages since he had laid hands upon it, and was confronted with a double
mystery. How had this time-stained epistle found its way into the pages,
and how had the more modern missive be had fully expected to find there
found its way out of it?

Suddenly an idea occurred to him which, though sufficiently far-fetched,
seemed as if it might by chan