‘If he isn’t sold he must be pretty well baked, so we won’t have anything to say to him,’ said John Treverton, laughing. ‘Don’t worry yourself about dinner, my good creature; we are too happy to care what we eat.’ And then he put his arm round his wife’s waist and led her along the corridor that ended in the book-room, where she had left him in his despair seven little months ago. They went into this room together, and he shut the door behind them. ‘Dear love, to think that I should enter this room the happiest of men. I, who sat by that table in such anguish as few men are ever called upon to suffer. Oh, Laura, that was the darkest day in my life.’ ‘Forget it,’ she said earnestly; ‘never let the past be named between us. There is so much of it that is still a mystery to me. You have told me so little of your early life, John, that if I were to think of the past I might begin to doubt you. Oh, love, I have trusted you blindly. Even when all things looked dark I went on trusting you; I clung to my belief in your goodness. I don’t know whether it was my weakness or my strength which made me so confident.’ ‘It was your strength, dearest, the strength of innocence, the strength of that divine charity which “thinketh no evil.” Dear love, it shall be the business of my life to prove you right, to show myself worthy of your trust.’ They roamed about the house together, looking at everything, as if each object were new to both, happy as children. They recalled their first meeting--their second--and confessed all they had felt on each occasion. It was delightful to them to travel backward through the history of their love, now that life was bright and the future seemed all secure. So their life went on for many days, Laura initiating her husband in his position as Squire of Hazlehurst. She took him round to all the cottages and introduced him to their inmates, and together they planned improvements which were to make Hazlehurst Manor one of the most perfect estates in the country. Above all things was there to be happiness for every one. Drainage and sanitation were to be so improved that fever and infection would be almost an impossibility. Every farm labourer was to have a clean and comfortable shelter, and a patch of ground where he might grow his cabbages, and, if blessed with a love of the beautiful, rear roses and carnations that might vie with the flowers in a ducal garden. Here in this mild western world, where frost and snow were almost strangers, the labouring man might clothe his cottage wall with myrtle, and grow fuchsias as big as apple-trees. To John Treverton, sick to the heart of cities, the novelty of this country life was full of delight. He was interested in the stables, the home farm, the gardens, even the poultry yard. He had a kindly word for the lowest hind upon his land. It seemed as if, in the great happiness of his married life, he had opened his heart to all mankind.