; and she had even thought vaguely that she might find some
work in Lockhaven, among John's people, and for them. They both fell into
the silence of their own thoughts, until the rector and his daughter came
back from church, and Gifford went home.

That next week was a thoughtful one with Gifford Woodhouse; Helen's words
had stirred those buried hopes, and it was hard to settle back into a
life of renunciation. He was strangely absent-minded in his office. One
day Willie Denner, who had come to read law, and was aspiring to be his
clerk, found him staring out of the window, with a new client's papers
lying untouched before him. After all, he thought, would it be wrong,
would it trouble Lois (he had said he should never trouble her), if he
just told her how the thought of her helped him, how she was a continual
inspiration in his life? "If I saw it bothered her, I could stop," he
argued.

And so, reasoning with himself, he rode over from Mercer late that
Saturday night. The little ladies were, as usual, delighted to see him.
These weekly visits were charming; their nephew could be admired and
fussed over to their hearts' content, but was off again before they had
time to feel their small resources at an end. The next morning he
dutifully went to church with them. Sunday was a proud day for the Misses
Woodhouse; each took an arm of the young man, whose very size made him
imposing, and walked in a stately way to the door of St. Michael's. They
would gladly have been supported by him to their pew, but it would have
been, Miss Deborah said, really flaunting their nephew in the faces of
less fortunate families, for Ashurst could not boast of another young
man.

Miss Ruth wore her new bonnet that day in honor of his presence. She had
taken it from the bandbox and carefully removed its wrapping of tissue
paper, looking anxiously at the clouds as she smoothed the lavender
strings and pinched the white asters on the side, before she decided that
it was safe to wear it.

Gifford looked up the rectory lane as they drew near the church, and
Miss Deborah noticed it. "Giff, dear," she asked, "did you observe, last
Sunday, how ill poor little Lois looked?"

"No," he said, somewhat startled.

"Ah, yes," said Miss Ruth, nodding her head so that the white asters
trembled, "she has never really gotten over that disappointment about
young Forsythe."

"But she was not engaged to him," responded Gifford boldly.

"Not engaged," Miss