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“And he never did?”

“He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. At twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is really necessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to win me.”

I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy’s hand in silence, and she went on:

“But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him. He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so distressed that I had thoughts–I actually contemplated running away to Australia?”

“Oh! why didn’t you?” I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious solution of the difficulty.

“Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that of course I could not leave him.”

“Could not we do it still?” I suggested. Of course I took for granted that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout the spirits of the principal eloper.

” Now! ” said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured her sweet face. “Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago, when you were a toddling baby.”

“I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now,” I said with clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy’s happiness.

“And is he still–still—-?” I ventured.

“I don’t know whether he is still–free. I have not heard from him for fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve years ago.”

To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.

“When she died,” said Aunt Emmy, “she was ill for a long time before, and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this ring.” She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. “She said she had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me. It had been her own engagement ring.”

“Why don’t you wear it on your engaged finger?”

“I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom was constantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. He is a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business, I’m told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand.”

By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility.

“I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I have not remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will be twenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else now, Colonel Stoddart or any one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is your Uncle Thomas, but I don’t think they have ever quite understood what I feel about Mr. Kingston.”