"There, sir, is the interest due on the mortgage. There is a slight explanation due you and also this gentleman here, who _was_ my friend. There are four persons in our family dependent on me for support and shelter. We were all so poor and helpless that it seemed impossible to maintain ourselves in independence. You make a proposition through my mother, never to me, that might be called generous if it had not been coupled with certain threats of prompt foreclosure if not accepted. In an hour of weakness and for the sake of the others, I said to my mother, never to you, that if I could not pay the interest and could not support the family, I would marry you. But I did very wrong, and I became so unhappy and desperate in view of this partial promise, that I thought I should lose my reason. But in the hour of my greatest darkness, when I saw no way out of our difficulties, I was led to see how wrongly I had acted, and to resolve that under no possible circumstances would I marry you, nor any man to whom I could not give a true wife's love. Since that time I have been able honestly to earn the money there; and in a few days more I will pay you the fifty dollars that my mother borrowed of you. So please give me my receipt." "And remember henceforth," said Arden, sternly, "that this lady has a protector." Simon was sharp enough to see that he was beaten, so he signed the receipt and gave it to Edith without a word. They left his office and started homeward. When out of the village Arden said timidly: "Can you forgive me, Miss Edith?" "Can you forgive me?" answered she, even more humbly. They stopped in the road and grasped each other's hands with a warmth more expressive than all words. Then they went on silently again. At the gate Edith said timidly: "Won't you come in?" "I dare not, Miss Allen," said Arden, gravely, and with a dash of bitterness in his voice "I am a man of honor with all my faults, and I would keep the promise I made you in the letter I wrote one year ago. I must see very little of you," he continued, in a very heartsick tone, "but let me serve you just the same." Edith's face seemed to possess more than human loveliness as it grew tender and gentle in the radiance of the full moon, and he looked at it with the hunger of a famished heart. "But you made the promise to me, did you not?" she asked in a low tone. "Certainly," said Arden. "Then it seems to me that I have the right to absolve you from the promise," she continued in a still lower tone, and a face like a damask-rose in moonlight. "Miss Allen--Edith--" said Arden, "oh, for Heaven's sake, be kind. Don't trifle with me." Edith had restrained her feelings so long that she was ready to either laugh or cry, so with a peal of laughter, that rang out like a chime of silver bells, she said: "Like the fat abbot in the story, I give you full absolution and plenary indulgence."