"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Margaret, with happy tears in her eyes. "To think you are going to see father and mother. I have wanted them to know the real you. I couldn't half _tell_ you, the real you, in a letter!" "Perhaps they won't look on me with your sweet blindness, dear," he said, smiling tenderly down on her. "Perhaps they will see only my dark, past life--for I mean to tell your father everything. I'm not going to have any skeletons in the closet to cause pain hereafter. Perhaps your father and mother will not feel like giving their daughter to me after they know. Remember, I realize just what a rare prize she is." "No, father is not like that, Lance," said Margaret, with her rare smile lighting up her happy eyes. "Father and mother will understand." "But if they should not?" There was the shadow of sadness in Gardley's eyes as he asked the question. "I belong to you, dear, anyway," she said, with sweet surrender. "I trust you though the whole world were against you!" For answer Gardley took her in his arms, a look of awe upon his face, and, stooping, laid his lips upon hers in tender reverence. "Margaret--you wonderful Margaret!" he said. "God has blessed me more than other men in sending you to me! With His help I will be worthy of you!" Three days more and Margaret was alone with her school work, her two missionary friends thirty miles away, her eager watching for the mail to come, her faithful attendant Bud, and for comfort the purple mountain with its changing glory in the distance.