e of an autumnal love than of old; and if the departing summer had
flung new hues over the forest and the glen, they were the duller hues
that recalled to mind the greater glory of the past. It was round a
dying year that Autumn was "folding his jewelled arms." Yet they were
happy--very happy, and they felt that, come what might, nothing on earth
could part them now.

When Kennedy had grown more calm, Violet called for Cyril, and bade him
break the fact of Edward's presence to her mother and Julian. The boy
bounded off to do her bidding, and in a few moments Kennedy was seated
among the Homes as one of them. They received him with no simulated
affection; Frank and Cyril helped to take away all awkwardness from the
meeting by their high spirits, and when they all sat down on the velvet
mosses to their rural meal, every one of them had banished the painful
hauntings of the past. Of course Kennedy accompanied them home; they
drove back in the quiet evening, and Kennedy sat by Violet's side.

He stayed at Ildown till Julian returned to Saint Werner's, and, as was
natural, he revolved in his mind continually his future course. At last
he determined to talk it over with Violet, and told her of all his
heroic longings for a life of toil and endeavour, if need were, even of
banishment and death--all the high thoughts that had filled his heart as
he sat alone in the island by Orton-on-the-Sea.

"Let us wait," she said, "Edward. God will decide all this for us in
time, and if duty seems to call you to the hard life of missionary or
colonist, I am ready to go with you."

"But don't you feel yourself, Violet, a kind of commonplace-ness about
English life; a silver-slippered religion, a pettiness that does not
satisfy, a sense of comfort incompatible with the strong desire to do
the work which others will not do in the neglected corners of the
vineyard?"

"No," she answered, smiling, "I am content:--

"`The trivial round, the common task
Should furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves--a road
To bring us daily nearer God.'"

"True," he said; "well, I must try not to carry ambition into my
religion."

"Of course you return to Saint Werner's next autumn?"

He mused long. "Ah, Violet, you cannot conceive how awful to my
imagination that place has grown. And to return after rustication, and
live among men who will regard me with galling curiosity, and dons who
will look at me sideways with suspici