iety, they were upon the veranda of the
cottage, quite unconscious of the necessity of digging into their own
minds. He was seated, and she was leaning against the railing on which
the honeysuckle climbed, pulling a flower in pieces.

"It is such a short time I have known you," she was saying, as if in
apology for her own feeling.

"Yes, in one way;" and he leaned forward, and broke his sentence with a
little laugh. "I think I must have known you in some pre-existent state."

"Perhaps. And yet, in another way, it seems long--a whole month, you
know." And the girl laughed a little in her turn.

"It was the longest month I ever knew, after you left the city."

"Was it? I oughtn't to have said that first. But do you know, Mr.
Henderson, you seem totally different from any other man I ever knew."

That this was a profound and original discovery there could be no doubt,
from the conviction with which it was announced. "I felt from the first
that I could trust you."

"I wish"--and there was genuine feeling in the tone--"I were worthier of
such a generous trust."

There was a wistful look in her face--timidity, self-depreciation,
worship--as Henderson rose and stood near her, and she looked up while he
took the broken flower from her hand. There was but one answer to this,
and in spite of the open piazza and the all-observant, all-revealing day,
it might have been given; but at the moment Miss Forsythe was seen
hurrying towards them through the shrubbery. She came straight to where
they stood, with an air of New England directness and determination. One
hand she gave to Henderson, the other to Margaret. She essayed to speak,
but tears were in her eyes, and her lips trembled; the words would not
come. She regarded them for an instant with all the overflowing affection
of a quarter of a century of repression, and then quickly turned and went
in. In a moment they followed her. Heaven go with them!

After Henderson had made his hasty adieus at our house and gone, before
the sun was down, Margaret came over. She came swiftly into the room,
gave me a kiss as I rose to greet her, with a delightful impersonality,
as if she owed a debt somewhere and must pay it at once--we men who are
so much left out of these affairs have occasionally to thank Heaven for a
merciful moment--seized my wife, and dragged her to her room.

"I couldn't wait another moment," she said, as she threw herself on my
wife's bosom in a passion of tears. "