“I shall be able to buy my own gowns, sir, if you please!” she announced prettily. “And I am going to send Mrs. Granite--with Jane--to her aunt Annie’s cousin Jenny’s (was that it?) in South Carolina, next winter, to get over that Windover cough. We’ve got to go ourselves, if _you_ don’t stop coughing. No? We’ll see!” “I _shall_ stop coughing,” cried Bayard joyously. She did not contradict him, for she believed in Love the Healer, as the young and the beloved do. So she went dreaming on. “I came across a piece of gold tissue in Florence; it will make such a pretty portière in place of that old mosquito-net! And we’ll make those dismal old rooms over into”-- And Bayard, who had thought never to know Paradise on earth, but only to toil for Heaven, closed her sentence by one ecstatic word. The completion of the chapel, still delayed after the fashion of contractors, was approaching the belated dedication day of which all Windover talked, and for which a growing portion of Windover interested itself. Bayard was over-busy for a newly betrothed man. His hours with Helen were shortened; his brief snatches of delight marked spaces between days of care. Erected upon the site of the burned building, the new chapel rose sturdily in the thick and black of Angel Alley. The old, illuminated, swinging sign remained,--“for luck,” the fishermen said. It was to be lighted on the day when the first service should be held in the new Christlove. There came a long, light evening, still in the early half of June. Bayard was holding some service or lecture in the town, and had late appointments with his treasurer, with Job Slip, and Captain Hap. He saw no prospect of freedom till too late an hour to call on Helen, and had gone down to tell her so; had bade her good-night, and left her. She had gone out rowing, in the delicious loneliness of a much loved and never neglected girl, and was turning the bow of the dory homewards. She drifted and rowed by turns, idle and happy, dreamy and sweet. It was growing dark, and the boats were setting shorewards. One, she noticed (a rough, green fishing-dory from the town), lay, rudely held by a twist of the painter, to the cliffs, at the left, below the float. The dory was empty. A sailor hat and an old tan-colored reefer lay on the stern seat. Two girls sat on the rocks, sheltered in one of the deep clefts or chasms which cut the North Shore, talking earnestly together. One of them had her foot upon the painter. Neither of them noticed Helen; she glanced at them without curiosity, rowed in, tossed her painter to the keeper of the float, and went up to the house. Her father was in Windover that night; he and her mother were discussing the inconceivable prospect of an Anniversary without entertaining the Trustees; they were quite absorbed in this stupendous event. Helen strolled out again, and off upon the cliff.