gardening?"

"And she had on a white gown and a straw hat with blue ribbons. What a
young thing she looked!--hardly older than Mistress Maud here."

John put his arm round his wife's waist--not so slender as it had been,
but comely and graceful still, repeating--with something of the musical
cadence of his boyish readings of poetry--a line or two from the sweet
old English song:

"And when with envy Time transported
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
You'll in your girls again be courted,
And I'll go wooing with my boys."

Ursula laughed, and for the time being the shadow passed from her
countenance. Her husband had happily not noticed it: and apparently,
she did not wish to tell him her trouble. She let him spend a happy
day, even grew happy herself in response to his care to make her so, by
the resolute putting away of all painful present thoughts, and calling
back of sweet and soothing memories belonging to this their old married
home. John seemed determined that, if possible, the marriage that was
to be should be as sacred and as hopeful as their own.

So full of it were we all, that not until the day after, when Lord
Ravenel had left us,--longing apparently to be asked to stay for the
wedding, but John did not ask him,--I remembered what he had said about
Guy's association with Lord Luxmore's set. It was recalled to me by
the mother's anxious face, as she gave me a foreign letter to post.

"Post it yourself, will you, Phineas? I would not have it miscarry, or
be late in its arrival, on any account."

No, for I saw it was to her son, at Paris.

"It will be the last letter I shall need to write," she added, again
lingering over it, to be certain that all was correct--the address
being somewhat illegible for that free, firm hand of hers. "My boy is
coming home."

"Guy coming home! To the marriage?"

"No; but immediately after. He is quite himself now. He longs to come
home."

"And his mother?"

His mother could not speak. Like light to her eyes, like life to her
heart, was the thought of Guy's coming home. All that week she looked
ten years younger. With a step buoyant as any girl's she went about
the marriage preparations; together with other preparations, perhaps
dearer still to the motherly heart, where, if any preference did lurk,
it was for the one for whom--possibly from whom--she had suffered most,
of all her children.

John, too, though the father's j