"But you may again not know," said I. "Now, Malcolm, don't be a greater fool than I was. If I say I did not order you to leave Haddon Hall, can't you take me at my word? My age and my love for you should induce you to let me ease my conscience, if I can. If the same illusion should ever come over you again--that is, if you should ever again imagine that I am ordering you to leave Haddon Hall--well, just tell me to go to the devil. I have been punished enough already, man. Come home with us. Here is Dorothy, whom I love better than I love myself. In anger I might say the same thing to her that I said to you, but--Nonsense, Malcolm, don't be a fool. Come home with us. Haddon is your home as freely as it is the home of Dorothy, Madge, and myself." The old gentleman's voice trembled, and I could not withstand the double force of his kindness and my desire. So it came about that when Madge held out her fair hand appealingly to me, and when Dorothy said, "Please come home with us, Cousin Malcolm," I offered my hand to Sir George, and with feeling said, "Let us make this promise to each other: that nothing hereafter shall come between us." "I gladly promise," responded the generous, impulsive old man. "Dorothy, Madge, and you are all in this world whom I love. Nothing shall make trouble between us. Whatever happens, we will each forgive." The old gentleman was in his kindest, softest mood. "Let us remember the words," said I. "I give my hand and my word upon it," cried Sir George. How easy it is to stake the future upon a present impulse. But when the time for reckoning comes,--when the future becomes the present,--it is sometimes hard to pay the priceless present for the squandered past. Next morning we all rode home to Haddon,--how sweet the words sound even at this distance of time!--and there was rejoicing in the Hall as if the prodigal had returned. In the evening I came upon Madge unawares. She was softly singing a plaintive little love song. I did not disturb her, and as I stole away again I said to myself, "God is good." A realization of that great truth had of late been growing upon me. When once we thoroughly learn it, life takes on a different color. CHAPTER VII TRIBULATION IN HADDON After I had left Haddon at Sir George's tempestuous order, he had remained in a state of furious anger against Dorothy and myself for a fortnight or more. But after her adroit conversation with him concerning the Stanley marriage, wherein she neither promised nor refused, and after she learned that she could more easily cajole her father than command him, Dorothy easily ensconced herself again in his warm heart, and took me into that capacious abode along with her.