IT was June weather now--warm and full, and a deep peace had fallen over Allenders. Harry, who was not naturally temperate in anything, was almost intemperate in his reformation now. He applied himself to business with devotion, had long consultations with Armstrong every morning, and repulsed coldly the usual familiarities of Gilbert Allenders. In his library, they always found the table covered with estimates and calculations, with expensive schemes for thrift, and elaborate economics of farming; while out of doors, Harry went blithely about his fields again, conciliating once more the half-alienated favour of his workmen, and regaining for himself the elastic vigour and health, which had begun to be shaken. Agnes sang to her baby all day long, till the very air within the house grew rich with ballad fragments. Rose, still a little weary in her heart, and longing secretly for a new beginning to her old dreams, began to interest herself in the pleasant pursuits of free young womanhood, and forgot the family care, as well as her own individual one. Martha sank back quietly into a temporary repose--was ill for a few days, and afterwards very quiet--for her frame had been shaken by severe exhaustion; very different from the natural good hope of common life, was the desperate stake for which she played; and when the moment, with all its pent-up and restrained excitement, was past, experience lifted its cold, prophetic voice again, and she could not choose but hear. But the gossips at Maidlin Cross, glad to return to their kindlier opinion--for Harry’s good looks, and naturally gracious manners, gave them a strong prepossession in his favour--congratulated each other that Allenders was steady now, and quite another man, and that “it bid to be” a great comfort to his sister and his wife--for they unconsciously put Martha before Agnes, doing reverence to the more absorbing love. And young Mr. Dunlop, seeing Harry’s frank face brightened by renewed hope and wholesome pleasure, and hearing how sedulously he had begun to attend to all his concerns, was smitten with remorse for his rudeness, and brought his mother in state to call on Mrs. Allenders, which her good-humoured ladyship would have done months ago but for his restraining. Prosperity and peace returned again, as it seemed; and Harry’s last thousand was still very little diminished.