“Not yet. Wait a little till I have prepared your father. He knows nothing. When you see her again it must be with full authority.” “You are right, mother. I am happy and I can wait!” A servant opened the door, bringing in a card. “Mr. Gould—what can he want of me, I wonder?” exclaimed the lady, looking at the card. “I will leave you to find out,” answered Horace, kissing his mother’s hand. Scarcely had the son disappeared from one door, when old Mr. Gould came in through another. He was grave and quiet, not to say stern, in his manner toward the lady who came forward to receive him. With that old-fashioned formality which is so pleasant in a gray-headed man, he led Mrs. Savage back to the seat she had left, and drew a chair close to it. Then he began conversing with her in a low, earnest voice. She heard him at first with a little surprise; then her interest deepened, the hot color came and went in her face; and more than once she broke out into exclamations that seemed half pleasure, half disappointment. When the old gentleman arose she gave him her hand, which he bowed over with a reverence which was not without grace. “I rejoice that you come too late,” she said, smiling upon him. “And so do I. Such things bring back one’s old trust in human nature.” “I, at least, ought to be thankful that all the atonement in my power was made in time,” she said, graciously. “You will all be punctual. I am an old business man, remember, and shall expect you at the moment.” “You can depend on us.” They shook hands at the door with great cordiality, and the old man smiled as he went down the steps. CHAPTER XXIII. AN ENGAGEMENT. The Burns family had moved into that pretty cottage, and were all assembled in the little dining-room which opened on the flower-garden, and from which it was festooned in by a drapery of vines, which filled the balconies with delicious green shadows. There was nothing very splendid about this new home; but it was, for all that, the prettiest little place you ever set eyes upon—and the scene within that dining-room a picture in itself. There sat the old lady, at the head of the table, with a pretty china tea-set before her, and the whitest of linen cloths falling from beneath the tray toward her lap. Opposite her sat Anna Burns, looking pale and sweetly sad, for the heartache never left her for a moment; but with a smile always ready for little Joseph, when he told her of some episode in his active young life, or boasted, in his bright, childish way, of the papers he had sold. Robert listened to him with a paternal smile on his young lips; and the dear old lady had a gentle word to say with every cup of tea that her little hand served out so daintily.