"I'll forgive her," said Uncle Ike, "when the wrong she has done has
been righted." He shut his teeth together sharply, faced the horses
again, and lapsed into silence.

In the afternoon Quincy joined Alice in the parlor, and they sang some
sacred music together.

Quincy picked up a book from the table and said, "Why, Miss Pettengill,
by this turned down corner I imagine there are some thirty pages of this
very interesting story, 'The Love of a Lifetime,' that I have not read
to you. Would you like to have me finish it this afternoon?"

"I have been afraid to hear the last chapter," said Alice. "I fear
Herbert and Clarice will both die, and I so hate a book with a sad
ending. Why don't authors keep their lovers alive--"

"Marry them off and let them live happily ever afterward," Quincy
concluded.

"I don't think I could ever write a book with a sorrowful conclusion,"
mused Alice.

Quincy saw the opportunity for which he had long waited.

"Why don't you write a book?" asked he earnestly. "My friend Leopold
says you ought to; he further said that you were a genius, and if I
remember him correctly, compared you to a diamond--"

"In the rough," added Alice quickly.

"That's it," said Quincy; "but Leopold added that rough diamonds should
be dug up, cut, and set in a manner worthy of their value."

"I am afraid Mr. Ernst greatly overrates my abilities and my worth,"
said she, a little constrainedly. "But how unkind and ungrateful I am to
you and Mr. Ernst, who have been so kind and have done so much for me. I
will promise this much," she continued graciously. "I will think it
over, and if my heart does not fail me, I will try."

"I hope your conclusion will be favorable," remarked Quincy. "In a short
time you will be financially independent and freed from any necessity of
returning to your former vocation. I never knew of an author so
completely successful at the start, and I think you have every
encouragement to make literature your 'love of a lifetime.'"

"I will try to think so too," replied Alice softly.

Then he took up the book and finished reading it. When he had closed,
neither he nor she were thinking of that future world in which Herbert
and Clarice had sealed those vows which they had kept so steadfastly and
truly during life, but of the present world, bright with promise for
each of them, in which there was but one shade of sorrow--that filmy web
that shut out the beauties of nature from the sight o