“I knew you would, and you have made me as happy as I ever can be until it is removed,” she said, lifting her face in such a confiding way that a hundred obstacles could not have prevented him from stooping down and kissing it, feeling, as he did so, that it was a kiss of betrothal which would last during all time. They were very silent on their way back to the house, where, fortunately for Kenneth, he found several calls for his professional services. It was well for him to be busy, as it kept his mind from dwelling on Connie and the mystery he must not try to fathom. It was some comfort to know she was in his home, a sunbeam in his parents’ life and all the world to him, with her sunny face and smile and words of welcome when he came in from his round of calls. “Sometime I shall know,” he thought, and the time was nearer than he supposed. CHAPTER XIV MRS. HARRY MORRIS After that walk to the ledge Connie seemed much happier, and began to take a lively interest in the Morris villa, the work on which was being pushed rapidly. Mr. Jones had called upon the deacon for his signature to Harry’s note for three thousand dollars, payable in six months. Connie was seated upon the piazza when he came, and through the open door could not fail to hear the conversation between the three men, Mr. Jones, the deacon and Kenneth, the latter of whom objected to his father’s pledging himself for so large a sum. “I feel sure you will have to pay it. I have heard a rumor that the place is mortgaged heavily,” he said, while his mother, soft-hearted as ever where Hal was concerned, pleaded for him, saying he would never see them injured. Suddenly a wild impulse seized Connie. She could not tell how or why, only that it came, and in a moment she was confronting the three men and startling them with the words: “I will sign that note with you, Guardy.” She still called him by that name. “I have the means, and if I should lose it will not hurt me much, I spend so little here. I’ve never seen Mr. Morris, but I feel interested in him and his bride. I am glad they are coming, and don’t let a paltry three thousand dollars mar their happiness.” It seemed a small sum to her, who knew so little the value of money, but to the deacon it was a fortune. He was, however, persuaded, and when Mr. Jones left the house he had both the deacon’s and Connie’s name as securities on Harry’s note. “You don’t know how funny I feel since I signed that note,” Connie said to Kenneth, after Jones was gone. “I don’t know why, except that I feel funny,—glad, as it were, with a new interest in the house, as if it were mine.”