“I have to beg your pardon for what I fear you will consider an unpardonable liberty; but my young friend here——Allow me to present Lieutenant Bruce——” Here the young officer approached and bowed reverentially, and the lady smiled on him and offered her hand, saying: “I have heard of Lieutenant Bruce from a young lady who is staying with me, and I am very happy to make him welcome to Edengarden.” The young officer bowed again and lifted the hand of the lady to his lips. “So! the great gun is fired, and nobody killed or desperately wounded,” muttered the doctor to himself; then, aloud: “My young friend here, as I was about to say, asked me to introduce him to you, madam, and, in fact, would take no denial.” “I am very glad to see him,” repeated the lady. “He had, in fact, a small parcel belonging to your young protégée, which he did not care to trust to an ordinary messenger, and which I, for reasons, did not volunteer to bring myself,” added the doctor with a merry look. “And perhaps, for the same cause, you would prefer to deliver your parcel in person, Mr. Bruce,” suggested the lady with a smile. “If you please, madam,” replied the young gentleman with a bow, expecting that his hostess would then send for her little companion. In fact, the lady touched the bell and brought her young page to her presence. “Show this gentleman to the blue parlor,” she said to the boy. “You will find Miss Palmer there,” she added to the man. Ronald Bruce arose, turned a grateful look upon the lady, and followed the page. “I perceive that you have divined this pretty little love idyl, and do not disapprove it,” said Dr. Willet as soon as he was left alone with the Lady of Edengarden. “I was about to make the very same observation to you. No, indeed, I do not disapprove of it. On the contrary, I wish to do everything I can to forward it. Dr. Willet!” “Well, my dear?” “I am going to match-making.” “You, my child?” “Yes. From what I have understood, her want of fortune is the only objection the lover’s friends have to his chosen bride—the only objection they _can_ have—for the girl is beautiful, intellectual, graceful, amiable, fairly educated, ladylike, and young enough to improve in all these things.” “But her want of fortune, my dear lady——” “I can supply. I have ample means and no children, no, nor even near relations in this world. I have fallen in love with this little girl! You smile, but, indeed, that is the only way in which I can express my sudden and increasing affection for little Emolyn Palmer. I will endow her richly on her marriage, and make her my heiress at my death. You smile again.” “I am thinking, dear lady, that you and your protégée seem to be so nearly of an age, that, to use a homely proverb, ‘When one dies of old age, the other may quake for fear!’” “There is sixteen years’ difference between our ages, doctor.”