"I confess," he said at last, "that this is a new idea to me--but that's no reason why it should be a bad idea. And if you really believe that it would be better for Rosy, and that Miss Wellow would not--" he hesitated awkwardly, "think it strange of me, I will do as you advise, Kate. But you must let me take my own time. Perhaps when she's heard what I've got to say, she won't feel about it as you believe she's likely to do. I cannot pretend that I--well, that I--" his lips refused to form the word--to him the infinitely sacred word--of love. Mrs. Rigby was bewildered, awed into deep joy. No piece of good fortune which could have befallen herself would have given her so acute a feeling--it almost amounted to pain--of passionate relief, and David Banfield, dimly gathering that it was so, felt exceedingly moved. Surely it was worth almost anything in the way of self-sacrifice to have brought such a look to his sister's face? They both moved more closely to one another and she, so chary of caress, put her arms round his neck. "I'm quite sure," she spoke with a catch in her voice, "quite, quite sure that you will never regret it! After all, life does get smoothed out, doesn't it? I'll tell you something about myself that I've never told anybody. Before Matthew came along, there was someone else I loved--loved, maybe, just as dearly as you loved Rosaleen." "I know," said her brother, wincing at the sound of his late wife's name, "you mean Nat Bower?" "Why, how did you ever guess that?" she asked, surprised. "Oh! he used to take me walks when I was a kid, and he always talked about you." Had Mrs. Rigby left the matter there, she would have been a wiser woman, but something prompted her to draw a moral. "And don't you think I'm glad now?" she cried. "Think of what that poor fellow has become, and what Matthew is now!" But this was too much for David Banfield. "I don't think that's fair!" he exclaimed. "What you ought to say is--'Think of what that poor fellow might have become if he had married me!' I don't believe any man could have helped going straight with you, Kate. If I'd been more like you----" Then, to the young man's relief, his brother-in-law, Matthew Rigby, came into the room, with a smile on his thin lips, a joke on his tongue. Mrs. Rigby went out into the garden. "Matilda!" she cried. "Tiddy dear, come in! Matt is here. Dinner will be ready in a minute." But as the two women met, and together walked down the path, the hostess gave her guest no hint of the good fortune which lay in wait for her--indeed, in spite of, or perhaps because of, her moment of softening, she was sharply, almost cruelly, intolerant of Miss Wellow's sentimental references to that ceremony of which they were about to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary. * * * * * And now the Silver Wedding festivity was drawing to a close.