Faith came in with the paper. Thomas brought up breakfast. And presently, these three, with all their thoughts of and for each other, that reached into the long years to come, and had their roots in all that had gone by, were gathered at the table, seemingly with no further anxiety than to know whether one or another would have toast or muffins--eggs or raspberries. Do we not--and most strangely and incomprehensively--live two lives? "I must write to my mother, to-day," said Margaret, when her father had driven away to the mills, and they had brought in a few fresh flowers from the terrace for the vases, and had had a little morning music, which Margaret always craved, "as an overture," she said, "to the day." "I must write to my mother; and you, I suppose, will be busy with answering Paul?" A little consciousness kept her from looking straight in Faith's face, as she spoke. Had she done so, she might have seen that a paleness came over it, and that the lips trembled. "I don't know," was the answer. "Perhaps not, to-day." "Not to-day? Won't he be watching every mail? I don't know much about it, to be sure; but I fancied lovers were such uneasy, exacting creatures!" "Paul is very patient," said Faith--not lightly, as Margaret had spoken, but as one self-reproached, almost, for abusing patience--"and they go to-morrow to Lake George. He won't look for a letter until he gets to Saratoga." She had calculated her time as if it were the minutes of a reprieve. When Paul Rushleigh, with his mother, reached Saratoga, he found two letters there, for him. One kind, simple, but reticent, from Faith--a mere answer to that which she could answer, of his own. The other was from his father. "There seems," he wrote to his son, toward the close, "to be a little cloud upon Faith, somehow. Perhaps it is one you would not wish away. It may brighten up and roll off, at your return. You, possibly, understand it better than I. Yet I feel, in my strong anxiety for your true good, impelled to warn you against letting her deceive herself and you, by giving you less than, for her own happiness and yours, she ought to be able to give. Do not marry the child, Paul, if there can be a doubt of her entire affection for you. You had better go through life alone, than with a wife's half love. If you have reason to imagine that she feels bound by anything in the past to what the present cannot heartily ratify--release her. I counsel you to this, not more in justice to her, than for the saving of your own peace. She writes you to-day. It may be that the antidote comes with the hurt. I may be quite mistaken. But I hurt you, my son, only to save a sorer pain. Faith is true. If she says she loves you, believe her, and take her, though all the world should doubt. But if she is fearful--if she hesitates--be fearful, and hesitate yourself, lest your marriage be no true marriage before Heaven!"