He could not wholly give up all thoughts of Joy Irving. She had grown to be a part of his hopes and dreams of the future, as she was a part of the reality of his present. But she was very young; he could afford to wait, and while he waited to study the girl’s character, and if he saw any budding shoot which bespoke the maternal tree, to prune and train it to his own liking. For the sake of his unborn children he felt it his duty to carefully study any woman he thought to make his wife. But when he reached home, the surprising intelligence awaited him that Miss Irving had left the metropolis. A brief note to the church authorities, resigning her position, and saying that she was about to leave the city, was all that anyone knew of her. The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the greatest secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans. Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of secrecy, she invites suspicion. The people who love to suspect their fellow-beings of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion. The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented the intimation from another that Miss Irving’s conduct had been peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart. “Is it her mother’s tendency to adventure developing in her?” he asked himself. Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number, thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office for the forwarding of mail. The letter was returned to him from that cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office. A personal in a leading paper failed to elicit a reply. And then one day six months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss Alice, who believed herself to be dying. She had been in a decline ever since the rector went away for his health. Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend divine service. It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when he arrived, and escorted him into his study.