“No.  I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London.  I came by the Palmyra.  But you don’t let me speak to Sylvie.”

He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney’s.

“Father, I’ve broken my promise; but I don’t think anybody could have helped it.  You couldn’t have helped it yourself.”

“I’ve seen Aunt Euphrasia.  I’ve been here almost an hour.  I have thanked God that nothing is broken but the promise, Rodney; and I think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been so faithfully kept.  I’m satisfied with one year.  I believe all the rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word.”

And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead.

Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear, earnest expression.

“I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,—­I hope you feel sure,”—­she said, “that I wouldn’t have been engaged to Rodney while there was a promise?”

“Not more than you could possibly help,” said Mr. Sherrett, smiling.

“Not the very least little bit!” said Sylvie, emphatically; and then they all three laughed together.

* * * * *

I don’t know why everything should have happened as it did, just in these few days; except—­that this book was to be all printed by the twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in.

That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr. Dakie Thayne.

He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver:  and the result had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter.

Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,—­I am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part of Dakie Thayne, was—­in some proportion at least,—­a piece of a horse-shoe!

If you have not happened to read “Real Folks,” you will not know what that means.  If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,—­their little section of the world’s great magnet of loving relation,—­might be made.  Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks.