She faltered and stopped, drooping her head before the tender triumph of his glance.  Truth had asserted herself, as with Dora she must have done in any stress, but now of a sudden found herself silenced by a timidity as charming as it was new in the strong and well poised temperament of the girl who, a moment before so brave, now stood trembling and blushing beneath her lover’s gaze.

He drew her to his breast, and pressed his lips to hers.

“Dora, my own wife!” whispered he.  “God so deal with me here and hereafter as I with you, the best gift in his mighty hand!”

And Dora, hiding her face upon his breast, whispered again,—­

“I was so unhappy an hour ago! and now, as Sunshine, says, I have come to heaven all at once!”

Her lover answered by a mute caress; for there are moments when words are all too weak for speech.  And so he only clasped her closer in his arms, and bent his head upon her own; while all about them the hundred voices of the summer noon whispered benediction on their joy; the eddying stream paused in its whirl to dimple into laughter at their feet; the sunlight, broken and flecked by the waving branches, fell in a shifting golden shower upon their heads; and Nature, the great mother, through her myriad eyes and tongues, blessed the betrothal of her dearest child.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A surprise for Mrs. Ginniss.

“Sure an’ it’s time they was a-coomin’,” said Mrs. Ginniss going out upon the door-stone, and shading her eyes from the level rays of the sunset as she looked steadfastly down the road.

“An’ who’ll they all be, I’m woondherin’?  The missus says fove bids was wanted; an’ faith it’s well she said no more, for sorra a place ‘ud there be to stand anudder in.  An’ tay ready for eight folks, at sax o’clock.  That’s it, I belave; though all thim figgers is enough to craze me poor head.”

She took a little note from her pocket as she spoke, and, unfolding it, looked anxiously at the delicate letters.

“Sure an’ it’s all there if on’y I had the sinse to rade it.  An’ feth, it’s the tail uv it I’m howldin’ to the top, as I’m a sinner!  No’ thin:  it looks as crabbed this way as that.  I’d niver be afther makin’ it out if it towld of a fortin coomin’ to me for the axin’.  Shusin, Shusin, I say!”

“What is it, Mrs. Ginniss?” asked a pleasant voice from within; and Susan, looking a little thinner and paler than when we first met her, came out of the parlor, where she had been picking a few scattered petals from beneath the vases of flowers upon the mantle-shelf.

“An’ would ye be plazed to read the missus’s note to me wonst more?  Me owld eyes are that dim, I can’t make it out in the gloamin’.”

Susan, with unshaken gravity, took the note, turned it right side up, and read aloud, while her companion craftily glanced over her shoulder to note the position of the words as they were spoken:—­ “Dear Mrs. Ginniss,—­