t and, clasping his knees, had sobbed her
heart out in imploring his forgiveness for what she called her wicked,
heedless, heartless conduct. No one saw that blessed meeting, that
scene of mutual forgiveness, of sweet reconciliation; too sweet and
serene, indeed, for Janet's stern and Calvinistic mold.

Are we ever quite content, I wonder, that others' bairnies should be
so speedily, so entirely, forgiven? All because of this had all
Janet's manifestations of sympathy for Robert to be tempered with a
fine reserve. As for Angela, it would never do to let the child so
soon forget that this should be an awful lesson. Aunt Janet's manner,
therefore, when, butterfly net in hand, she required of her niece full
explanation of the presence in the room of this ravished trophy, was
something fraught with far too much of future punishment, of wrath
eternal. Even in her chastened mood Angela's spirit stood _en garde_.
"I have told father everything, auntie," she declared. "I leave it all
to him," and bore in silence the comments, without the utterance of
which the elder vestal felt she could not conscientiously quit the
field. "Bold," "immodest," "unmaidenly," "wanton," were a choice few
of Aunt Janet's expletives, and these were unresented. But when she
concluded with "I shall send this--thing to him at once, with my
personal apologies for the act of an irresponsible child," up sprang
Angela with rebellion flashing from her eyes. She had suffered
punishment as a woman. She would not now be treated as a child. To
Janet's undisguised amaze and disapprobation, Wren decided that Angela
herself should send both apology and net. It was the first missive of
the kind she had ever written, but, even so, she would not submit it
for either advice or criticism--even though its composition cost her
many hours and tears and sheets of paper. No one but the recipient had
so much as a peep at it, but when Blakely read it a grave smile
lighted his pallid and still bandaged face. He stowed the little note
in his desk, and presently took it out and read it again, and still
again, and then it went slowly into the inner pocket of his white sack
coat and was held there, while he, the wearer, slowly paced up and
down the veranda late in the starlit night. This was the evening of
Daly's funeral, the evening of the day on which he and his captain had
shaken hands and were to start afresh with better understanding.

Young Duane was officer of the day and,