“Oh, how glad I am that you have come to-day,” she said, and explained forthwith all the circumstances with the frank diffuse explanatoriness of youth. “Now we are rich again; and oh, Mr. Nolan, I am so happy!” she cried, her soft eyes glowing with an excess of light which dazzled the curate. People who have never been rich themselves, and never have any chance of being rich, find it difficult sometimes to understand how others are affected in these unwonted circumstances. He was confounded by her frank rapture, the joy which seemed to him so much more than was necessary. “I’m glad to see you so happy,” he said, bewildered; “no doubt money’s a blessing, and ye’ve felt the pinch, my poor child, or ye wouldn’t be so full of your joy.” “Oh, Mr. Nolan, how I have felt it!” she said, her eyes filling with tears. A cloud fell over her face for the space of a moment, and then she laughed and cried out joyously, “but thank Heaven that is all over now.” Mrs. Damerel was writing in the drawing-room, writing to her boys to tell them the wonderful news. Rose led the visitor in, pushing open the window which opened on the garden. “I have told him all about it, and how happy we are,” she said, going up to her mother with all the confidence of happiness, and giving her, with unwonted demonstration, a kiss upon her forehead, before she danced out again to the sunny garden. Mrs. Damerel was a great deal more sober in her exultation, which relieved the curate. She told him how it had all come about, and what a deliverance it was; then cried a little, having full confidence in his sympathy, over that unremovable regret that it had not come sooner. “How happy it would have made him--and relieved all his anxiety about us,” she said. Mr. Nolan made some inarticulate sound, which she took for assent; or, at least, which it pleased her to mistake for assent. In her present mood it was sweet to think that her husband had been anxious, and the curate knew human nature too well to contradict her. And then she gave him a little history of the past three months during which he had been absent, and of Rose’s engagement and all Mr. Incledon’s good qualities. “He would have done anything for us,” said Mrs. Damerel; “but oh, how glad I am we shall not want anything--only Rose’s happiness, which in his hands is secure.” “Mr. Incledon!” said the curate, with a little wonder in his voice. “Ah, and so that is it. I thought it couldn’t be nothing but money that made the child so pleased.” “You thought she looked very happy?” said the mother, with a sudden fright.