And indeed she was; Mrs. Richie's quiet life with her son had kept her forehead smooth, and her eyes--eyes the color of a brook which loiters in shady places over last year's leaves--softly clear. There was a gentle placidity about her; the curious, shy hesitation, the deep, half-frightened sadness, which had been so marked when her landlord knew her first, had disappeared; sometimes she even showed soft gaieties of manner or speech which delighted her moody neighbor to the point of making him laugh. And laughing had all the charm of novelty to poor Robert Ferguson. "I never dreamed of her going away," he said to himself. Well, yes; certainly Mrs. Maitland had some sense, after all. When, a week later, blundering and abrupt, he referred to Mrs. Maitland's "sense," Mrs. Richie could not at first understand what he was talking about. "She 'knew more than you gave her credit for'? I thought you gave her credit for knowing everything! Oh, you don't want me to leave Mercer? I don't see the connection. _I_ don't know everything! But you are very flattering, I'm sure. I am a 'good tenant,' I suppose?" "Please don't go." She laughed at what she thought was his idea of a joke; then said, with half a sigh, that she did not know any one in Philadelphia; "when David isn't at home I shall be pretty lonely," she said. "Please don't go," he said again, in a low voice. They were sitting before the fire in Mrs. Richie's parlor; the glass doors of the plant-room were open,--that plant-room, which had been his first concession to her; and the warm air of the parlor was fragrant with blossoming hyacinths. There was a little table between them, with a bowl of violets on it, and a big lamp. Robert Ferguson rose, and stood with his hands behind him, looking down at her. His hair, in a stiff brush above his forehead, was quite gray, but his face in its unwonted emotion seemed quivering with youth. He knocked off his glasses irritably. "I never know how to say things," he said, in a low voice; "but--please don't go." Mrs. Richie stared at him in amazement. "I think we'd better get married," he said. "_Mr. Ferguson!_" "I think I've cared about you ever since you came here, but I am such a fool I didn't know it until Mrs. Maitland said that absurd thing last fall." "I--I don't know what you mean!" she parried, breathlessly; "at any rate, please don't say anything more about it." "I have to say something more." He sat down again with the air of one preparing for a siege. "I've got several things to say. First, I want to find out my chances?" "You haven't any." His face moved. He put on his glasses carefully, with both hands. "Mrs. Richie, is there any one else? If so, I'll quit. I know you will answer straight; you are not like other women. _Is there anybody else?_ That--that Old Chester doctor who comes to see you once in a while, I understand he's a widower now; wife's just died; and if--" "There is nobody; _never_ anybody."