Loring stood looking gravely, straight into the face of his superior. Swiftly his thoughts sped back to that soft, warm evening when he and the rector slowly ascended the gentle grade toward Mrs. Burton's homestead, and there was unfolded before his eyes that picture he was destined never to forget, the lovely tints of the clear northern sky, the broad valley of the great river, with its bounding bluffs and hillocks, hued by the dying day, the dark forms, slender and graceful both, coming nearer and nearer, until in startled recognition of one at least, he halted in dumb amaze, and therefore caught but flitting glimpse of the other as it whisked jauntily away. He had his suspicions, strong and acute, yet with nothing tangible as yet on which to base them, and if he breathed them, what would be the result? The girl whose identity he had promised not to betray "until sister Naomi could be heard from," would beyond all question be called to account. To his very door had she come within forty-eight hours of that strange evening, which the rector's prattle had made public property, begged a minute's interview without giving any name, and stepping down into the plainly furnished little western parlor, there in the dim light of a single kerosene burner, Walter Loring had come face to face with his old love--Geraldine. Mindful of all the harm she had done him in San Francisco, rather than of what had passed before, he met her in stern silence. On his generosity, his magnanimity she threw herself. She had deceived and wronged him in ever engaging herself to him, she said, and would have gone on to say more. "That is all past and done with," he coldly interposed. "What is it now?" And then it transpired that good Mr. Lambert had been the means of securing for Naomi an excellent position, that Naomi had gone to enter on her duties and had sent for her sister to come and live at Mrs. Burton's until she could better provide for her, that Naomi was living under an assumed name, and that she prayed that no one might know their unhappy past. The interview was cut short by the curiosity of some member of the household who came in ostensibly to trim the lamp.