He had long ago put by the strange, sweet sense of having discovered in her a familiar friend—one who fitted into his longings and his ideals as though he had always been waiting for her. He called the thought a foolish sentimentality, and, in view of the relation in which she was soon to be placed to him, he tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible with regard to her. He sent several pleasant brotherly messages—which never reached her—through the medium of Harrington. He tried to accept the thought of a new sister as a delightful thing, and always he regarded her beauty and grace with the utmost reverence. The father, while feeling that Charles’s absence was almost a discourtesy to his brother, nevertheless gave reluctant consent. Then, a few days before the wedding, there came over Charles an overwhelming feeling that he must go. All his former arguments in favor of remaining away seemed as water. He felt as if the eyes and the smile of the girl he had seen upon the hillside called him imperatively. Try as he would to tell himself that with his present feelings it was foolish, even dangerous, for him to go near her, and that his brother was already a little jealous owing to the look that had passed between them, it made no difference; he felt that he must go, and go he did. Without waiting to do more than throw a few necessities into a valise, he took the first stage-coach that started from Boston. All through the long journey his heart beat wildly with the thought that he was to meet her. He was ashamed of the feeling. Yet in vain he told himself that it was wrong; that he ought to go back. Once he flung himself out of the coach at a station where they were taking on fresh horses, determined to return to Boston, and then madly climbed up to the seat with the driver just as the coach started again. After that he grimly faced the matter, asking himself if it were not better to go on after all, meet his new sister-in-law on a common, every-day basis, and get this nonsense out of his head forever. Then he tried to sleep and forget, but her face and her smile haunted him, and there seemed to be an appeal in her eyes that called him to her aid. When he presented himself at his father’s door in the early morning of the day before the wedding, his face was gray with combat, yet in his eyes was the light of a noble resolve. In spite of all his reasoning, he could not help the feeling that he had come because he was needed, but he was here, and there was a duty connected with it which he felt strong to do. It was therefore not a surprise to him when his father met him with eager welcome and a grave face. "My son, you have come just when I needed you most," he said as he drew the young man inside the library door. And then Charles noticed that his father seemed suddenly aged and heavy with sorrow. He knew it was nothing connected with the immediate family of the household, for they had all welcomed him with eager clamor and delight.