At the lich-gate Aunt Rachel paused to shake hands with everybody but Ruth and Reuben. “You had better take Manzini home to-night, Reuben,” said Ruth. She tried hard to make her voice commonplace; but to Reuben's ears there was a meaning in it, and his eyes answered to the meaning with such a flash of tenderness and assured joy that, in spite of all she could do, Ruth must needs lower her head and blush again. Rachel's youthful eyes flashed from one to the other. “I do not propose to attend the service this evening, Niece Ruth,” she said, a minute later, when Reuben and his _confrere_ had entered on the cavernous darkness of the winding stairway. “I will call for you, however,” she added. “I shall be in the porch at the close of the service.” At the first clause of this speech Ruth rejoiced, but at the second her sense of relief was spoiled. “Very well, dear,” she answered. Aunt Rachel could not stand much longer between her and Reuben, and if a fight should have to be made it would be early enough to begin it when she had her father definitely on her side, as she would have to-morrow. So she went into church and made strenuous efforts to attend to the service and the sermon, and failed dismally, and thought herself terribly profane. Aunt Rachel, being left alone at the church porch, turned away and walked straight back to the house she had left. The green door in the high wall needed no more than a push to open it, and Rachel entered the garden, and, walking straight to the table at which the quartette party had sat playing an hour or two earlier, laid hands upon Manzini's volume of duets for the violin. She took it by the back of the cover and gave it a shake, and out from its pages fell a neatly folded little note, addressed in her niece's hand to Mr. Reuben Gold, and sealed in bronze wax with the impress of a rose. The little old lady pounced upon it, and held it at arm's-length in both hands. “Infatuated child!” she said, in her primmest and most fashionable accent. “My premonitions have not deceived me.” She placed the note in the bosom of her dress, set the book in its former position upon the table, and left the garden. Nobody looking at her could have supposed that she had been guilty of such an act; for if ever conscious rectitude and high resolve for good shone in a human face, they lighted hers. Once she stopped short in the lonely lane, and stamped one small foot with lofty emphasis. “The very method!” she said aloud, in a voice of scorn. “For aught I know, the very book! You shall not suffer as I have suffered, my poor dear child. I thank Heaven that I am at hand to preserve you.”