Softly, gladly came the good angel back, and ’mid a rain of tears which dropped on Adam’s hair, Anna wept her hardness all away, while the only sound heard in the room was the beating of two hearts and the occasional roll of thunder muttering in the distance. In reality it was only a few moments, but to Anna it seemed a long, long time that they sat thus together, her face bent down upon his head, while she thought of all the past since she could remember Adam Floyd and the blind old woman, his mother. He had been a dutiful son, Anna knew, for she had heard how tenderly he would bear his mother in his strong arms or guide her uncertain steps, and how at the last he sat by her night after night, never wearying of the tiresome vigil until it was ended, and the sightless eyes, which in death turned lovingly to him, were opened to the light of Heaven. To such as Adam Floyd the commandment of promise was rife with meaning. God would prolong his days and punish those who wronged him. He who had been so faithful to his mother, would be true to his wife—aye, truer far than young Dunallen, with all his polish and wealth. “Adam,” Anna began at last, so low that he scarcely could hear her. “Adam forgive me all that is past. I have been cold and indifferent, have treated you as I ought not, but I am young and foolish, I—I—oh! Adam, I mean to do better. I—” She could not say, “will banish Dunallen from my mind”—it was not necessary to mention him, she thought; but some explanation must be made, and so, steadying her voice, she told him how dearly she had loved him once, thinking there was not in all the world his equal, but that during the year at a city school she had acquired some foolish notions and had sometimes wished her lover different. “Not better at heart. You could not be that,” she said, looking him now fully in the face, for she was conscious of meaning what she said, “but—but—” “You need not finish it, darling; I know what you mean,” Adam said, the cloud lifting in a measure from his brow. “I am not refined one bit, but my Blossom is, and she shall teach me. I will try hard to learn. I will not often make her ashamed. I will even imitate _Dunallen_, if that will gratify my darling.” Why would he keep bringing in that name, when the sound of it was so like a dagger to Anna’s heart, and when she wished she might never hear it again? He was waiting for her now in the beech woods she knew, for she was to join him there ere long, not to say what she would have said an hour ago, but to say that she could not, would not wrong the noble man who held her to his bosom so lovingly as he promised to copy _Dunallen_. And as Anna suffered him to caress her, she felt her olden love coming back. She should be happy with him—happier far than if she were the mistress of Castlewild, and knew that to attain that honor she had broken Adam’s heart.