Sunday morning all of the Pettengill family went to church and listened to a sermon by Mr. Howe, the minister, from the text, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the kingdom of Heaven.”

As they were driving home, Uncle Ike remarked in his dry, sarcastic way, “I s’pose Mr. Howe was thinkin’ of Mrs. Putnam when he was praisin’ the peacemakers; it’s a fashion in the country, I understand, the Sunday after a funeral to preach in a general way about the departed one.”

“Mrs. Putnam has been very kind to me,” protested Alice, “and you should forgive her for my sake.”

“I’ll forgive her,” said Uncle Ike, “when the wrong she has done has been righted.”  He shut his teeth together sharply, faced the horses again, and lapsed into silence.

In the afternoon Quincy joined Alice in the parlor, and they sang some sacred music together.

Quincy picked up a book from the table and said, “Why, Miss Pettengill, by this turned down corner I imagine there are some thirty pages of this very interesting story, ‘The Love of a Lifetime,’ that I have not read to you.  Would you like to have me finish it this afternoon?”

“I have been afraid to hear the last chapter,” said Alice.  “I fear Herbert and Clarice will both die, and I so hate a book with a sad ending.  Why don’t authors keep their lovers alive—­”

“Marry them off and let them live happily ever afterward,” Quincy concluded.

“I don’t think I could ever write a book with a sorrowful conclusion,” mused Alice.

Quincy saw the opportunity for which he had long waited.

“Why don’t you write a book?” asked he earnestly.  “My friend Leopold says you ought to; he further said that you were a genius, and if I remember him correctly, compared you to a diamond—­”

“In the rough,” added Alice quickly.

“That’s it,” said Quincy; “but Leopold added that rough diamonds should be dug up, cut, and set in a manner worthy of their value.”

“I am afraid Mr. Ernst greatly overrates my abilities and my worth,” said she, a little constrainedly.  “But how unkind and ungrateful I am to you and Mr. Ernst, who have been so kind and have done so much for me.  I will promise this much,” she continued graciously.  “I will think it over, and if my heart does not fail me, I will try.”

“I hope your conclusion will be favorable,” remarked Quincy.  “In a short time you will be financially independent and freed from any necessity of returning to your former vocation.  I never knew of an author so completely successful at the start, and I think you have every encouragement to make literature your ‘love of a lifetime.’”

“I will try to think so too,” replied Alice softly.

Then he took up the book and finished reading it.  When he had closed, neither he nor she were thinking of that future world in which Herbert and Clarice had sealed those vows which they had kept so steadfastly and truly during life, but of the present world, bright with promise for each of them, in which there was but one shade of sorrow—­that filmy web that shut out the beauties of nature from the sight of that most beautiful of God’s creations, a lovely woman.