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“Yours affectionately,

“AARON DUNN.”

That was all. It was very short, and did not contain one word of love; but it made the widow’s heart leap for joy. She was rather afraid that Aaron was angry, he wrote so curtly and with such a brusque business-like attention to mere facts; but surely he could have but one object in coming there. And then he alluded specially to a wife. So the widow’s heart leapt with joy.

But how was she to tell Susan? She ran up stairs almost breathless with haste, to the bedroom door; but then she stopped; too much joy she had heard was as dangerous as too much sorrow; she must think it over for a while, and so she crept back again.

But after breakfast–that is, when she had sat for a while over her teacup–she returned to the room, and this time she entered it. The letter was in her hand, but held so as to be hidden;–in her left hand as she sat down with her right arm towards the invalid.

“Susan dear,” she said, and smiled at her child, “you’ll be able to get up this morning? eh, dear?”

“Yes, mother,” said Susan, thinking that her mother objected to this idleness of her lying in bed. And so she began to bestir herself.

“I don’t mean this very moment, love. Indeed, I want to sit with you for a little while,” and she put her right arm affectionately round her daughter’s waist.

“Dearest mother,” said Susan.

“Ah! there’s one dearer than me, I guess,” and Mrs. Bell smiled sweetly, as she made the maternal charge against her daughter.

Susan raised herself quickly in the bed, and looked straight into her mother’s face. “Mother, mother,” she said, “what is it? You’ve something to tell. Oh, mother!” And stretching herself over, she struck her hand against the corner of Aaron’s letter. “Mother, you’ve a letter. Is he coming, mother?” and with eager eyes and open lips, she sat up, holding tight to her mother’s arm.

“Yes, love. I have got a letter.”

“Is he–is he coming?”

How the mother answered, I can hardly tell; but she did answer, and they were soon lying in each other’s arms, warm with each other’s tears. It was almost hard to say which was the happier.

Aaron was to be there that evening–that very evening. “Oh, mother, let me get up,” said Susan.

But Mrs. Bell said no, not yet; her darling was pale and thin, and she almost wished that Aaron was not coming for another week. What if he should come and look at her, and finding her beauty gone, vanish again and seek a wife elsewhere!

So Susan lay in bed, thinking of her happiness, dozing now and again, and fearing as she waked that it was a dream, looking constantly at that drawing of his, which she kept outside upon the bed, nursing her love and thinking of it, and endeavouring, vainly endeavouring, to arrange what she would say to him.

“Mother,” she said, when Mrs. Bell once went up to her, “you won’t tell Hetta and Phineas, will you? Not to-day, I mean?” Mrs. Bell agreed that it would be better not to tell them. Perhaps she thought that she had already depended too much on Hetta and Phineas in the matter.

Susan’s finery in the way of dress had never been extensive, and now lately, in these last sad winter days, she had thought but little of the fashion of her clothes. But when she began to dress herself for the evening, she did ask her mother with some anxiety what she had better wear. “If he loves you he will hardly see what you have on,” said the mother. But not the less was she careful to smooth her daughter’s hair, and make the most that might be made of those faded roses.