I knew well enough before the next day was over that it was too late for the rescue of Margaret or Henderson.  They were in the rapids, and would have rejected any friendly rope thrown to draw them ashore.  And notwithstanding the doubts of my wife, I confess that I had so much sympathy with the genuineness of it that I enjoyed this shock of two strong natures rushing to their fate.  Was it too sudden?  Do two living streams hesitate when they come together?  When they join they join, and mingle and reconcile themselves afterwards.  It is only canals that flow languidly in parallel lines, and meet, if they meet at all, by the orderly contrivance of a lock.

In the morning the two were off for a stroll.  There is a hill from which a most extensive prospect is had of the city, the teeming valley, with a score of villages and innumerable white spires, of forests and meadows and broken mountain ranges.  It was a view that Margaret the night before had promised to show Henderson, that he might see what to her was the loveliest landscape in the world.  Whether they saw the view I do not know.  But I know the rock from which it is best seen, and could fancy Margaret sitting there, with her face turned towards it and her hands folded in her lap, and Henderson sitting, half turned away from it, looking in her face.  There is an apple orchard just below.  It was in bloom, and all the invitation of spring was in the air.  That he saw all the glorious prospect reflected in her mobile face I do not doubt—­all the nobility and tenderness of it.  If I knew the faltering talk in that hour of growing confidence and expectation, I would not repeat it.  Henderson lunched at the Forsythe’s, and after lunch he had some talk with Miss Forsythe.  It must have been of an exciting nature to her, for, immediately after, that good woman came over in a great flutter, and was closeted with my wife, who at the end of the interview had an air of mysterious importance.  It was evidently a woman’s day, and my advice was not wanted, even if my presence was tolerated.  All I heard my wife say through the opening door, as the consultation ended, was, “I hope she knows her own mind fully before anything is decided.”

As to the objects of this anxiety, they were upon the veranda of the cottage, quite unconscious of the necessity of digging into their own minds.  He was seated, and she was leaning against the railing on which the honeysuckle climbed, pulling a flower in pieces.

“It is such a short time I have known you,” she was saying, as if in apology for her own feeling.

“Yes, in one way;” and he leaned forward, and broke his sentence with a little laugh.  “I think I must have known you in some pre-existent state.”

“Perhaps.  And yet, in another way, it seems long—­a whole month, you know.”  And the girl laughed a little in her turn.

“It was the longest month I ever knew, after you left the city.”

“Was it?  I oughtn’t to have said that first.  But do you know, Mr. Henderson, you seem totally different from any other man I ever knew.”