Youth
and laughter and love had not been in her house before for a quarter of
a century.

"Come again," she begged, when they started home. Joy incarnate was a
welcome guest--it did not mock her now.

Half-way down the path, Ralph turned back to the veiled woman who stood
wistfully in the doorway. Araminta was swinging, in childish fashion,
upon the gate. Ralph took Miss Evelina's hand in his.

"I wish I could say all I feel," he began, awkwardly, "but I can't.
With all my heart, I wish I could give some of my happiness to you!"

"I am content--since I have forgiven."

"If you had not, I could never have been happy again, and even now, I
still feel the shame of it. Are you going to wear that--veil--always?"

"No," she whispered, shrinking back into the shelter of it, "but I am
waiting for a sign."

"May it soon come," said Ralph, earnestly.

"I am used to waiting. My life has been made up of waiting. God bless
you," she concluded, impulsively.

"And you," he answered, touching his lips to her hand. He started
away, but she held him back. "Ralph," she said, passionately, "be true
to her, be good to her, and never let her doubt you. Teach her to
trust you, and make yourself worthy of her trust. Never break a
promise made to her, though it cost you everything else you have in the
world. I am old, and I know that, at the end, nothing counts for an
instant beside the love of two. Remember that keeping faith with her
is keeping faith with God!"

"I will," returned Ralph, his voice low and uneven. "It is what my own
mother would have said to me had she been alive to-day. I thank you."

The house was very lonely after they had gone, though the echoes of
love and laughter seemed to have come back to a place where they once
held full sway. The afternoon wore to its longest shadows and the
dense shade of the cypress was thrown upon the garden. Evelina smiled
to herself, for it was only a shadow.

The mignonette breathed fragrance into the dusk. Scent of lavender and
rosemary filled the stillness with balm. Drowsy birds chirped sleepily
in their swaying nests, and the fairy folk of field and meadow set up a
whirr of melodious wings. White, ghostly moths fluttered, cloud-like,
over the quiet garden, and here and there a tiny lamp-bearer starred
the night. A flaming meteor sped across the uncharted dark of the
heavens, where only the love-star shone. The moon had not yet risen.

From within, Ev