For answer, he caught her to him, and with his lips upon hers, he vowed to hold her in his heart of hearts forever and forever. Presently, after what seemed to them a few moments of silence and sweet peace, Diantha lifted her head from his breast, and said: "Come, John, Aunt Clara will wonder at our being in here without alight. Come, let us go out and thank her." "Wait one moment, my girl." But she insisted, and together they opened the door, and stood with modest assertion of their love before their dearest friend. John held his arm around the girl, as if fearing she might change her mind when once in the light, and observed by other eyes. "This John of mine is a queer John, Aunt Clara," said Diantha, merrily, her breath quick with the joy of her expressed ownership in the big fellow beside her; "he seems to think, because I am glad to see him, that he can domineer over me, and he has kept me in there nearly half an hour, simply to tell him that I am glad he has got home." "Half an hour?" asked Aunt Clara, dryly; "you two have shut yourselves up in there for over two hours. It's after ten o'clock." "Why, John Stevens, I am ashamed of you," said the girl, with sparkling eyes and soft laughter. "A man has a right to say how-do-you-do to his wife, hasn't he?" he said, gravely. "Oh, John, how could you?" breathed the girl; "how dare you speak so? You haven't asked me yet." "We will be married, Aunt Clara, and, please God, one month from today." "Oh, you John! What impudence! Aunt Clara, did you ever see anything like it? Here he has never courted me one bit in his life, and never even asked me to marry him, and now he takes the law into his own hands in that way!" John drew her closer to his side, with his encircling arm, and looking down into her eyes, he said: "Dear girl, I have been courting you in spirit all my life. Let me have my own way now, will you not?" His tone was so gentle, so tender, that she answered softly, yet still half-mischievously: "Well, Aunt Clara, I guess we will have to let him have his way. He is so big that he could crush us both if we didn't please him." Aunt Clara's eyes were moist with tears, as she watched them. She rejoiced in their love, and she was content that she had helped a little. But as they started out of the door to leave her, and Diantha came back to kiss her once more in token of love and gratitude, Aunt Clara's heart flew back to their lost Ellie, and all the sad, miserable story. She went to the door and watched them go out of the gate, Diantha still full of bubbling mischief, with her quick, pretty gestures of teasing indifference as she refused even to take John's arm in the bright moonlight--it all brought back her Ellie's love for this same good man, and she turned back into her room with sobs in her throat; and then she knelt in silent prayer for these two who had gone out from her home to their blessed future.