like a great diplomatist, or like the
gods themselves, whom some unexacting, humble youth calls upon to

"Annihilate both time and space,
And make two lovers happy!"

"And I'm sure I shall be happy too, in seeing them. They shall be
married immediately. And we'll take William into partnership--that was
a whim of his, mother--we call one another 'Guy' and 'William,' just
like brothers. Heigho! I'm very glad. Are not you?"

The mother smiled.

"You will soon have nobody left but me. No matter. I shall have you
all to myself, and be at once a spoiled child, and an uncommonly merry
old bachelor."

Again the mother smiled, without reply. She, too, doubtless thought
herself a great diplomatist.

William Ravenel--he was henceforward never anything to us but
William--came home with Mr. Halifax. First, the mother saw him; then I
heard the father go to the maiden bower where Maud had shut herself up
all day--poor child!--and fetch his daughter down. Lastly, I watched
the two--Mr. Ravenel and Miss Halifax--walk together down the garden
and into the beech-wood, where the leaves were whispering and the
stock-doves cooing; and where, I suppose, they told and listened to the
old tale--old as Adam--yet for ever beautiful and new.

That day was a wonderful day. That night we gathered, as we never
thought we should gather again in this world, round the family
table--Guy, Edwin, Walter, Maud, Louise, and William Ravenel--all
changed, yet not one lost. A true love-feast it was: a renewed
celebration of the family bond, which had lasted through so much
sorrow, now knitted up once more, never to be broken.

When we came quietly to examine one another and fall into one another's
old ways, there was less than one might have expected even of outward
change. The table appeared the same; all took instinctively their old
places, except that the mother lay on her sofa and Maud presided at the
urn.

It did one's heart good to look at Maud, as she busied herself about,
in her capacity as vice-reine of the household; perhaps, with a natural
feeling, liking to show some one present how mature and sedate she
was--not so very young after all. You could see she felt deeply how
much he loved her--how her love was to him like the restoring of his
youth. The responsibility, sweet as it was, made her womanly, made her
grave. She would be to him at once wife and child, plaything and
comforter, sustainer and sustaine