"I shall have the best;" with winning confidence.
"I loved your mother. I was a young lad, and she some five years older. I suppose I was like a young brother to her, because your father, her lover, had been here so much. And somehow, you slipped into the place where there never had been any other."
"It must have been kept for me," she said gravely. "And now I give you warning that I shall never go out of it. No place could ever be so dear as this house with all its memories. I am glad you knew and loved my mother."
It came noon before they were talked out, or before they had settled only one point, about which she would have her way. She wrote a pretty note to Mr. Saltonstall, reiterating some things she had said the evening before, and acknowledging that when she had tried to accept him, she had found her heart was another's, "and you are worthy of a woman's best love," she added, which did comfort him.
Still it puzzled him a good deal, but he finally settled upon Anthony and thought it a rather foolish choice. No doubt but that Giles Leverett was back of it all.
They told Cousin Eunice and Miss Winn. The former cried for sheer joy. She seemed older than her years, but she was well and bid fair to live years yet.
"Then you will never go away. I could not live without you, and as for Chilian——"
"It would only be half a life," returned the lover, and he kissed Cousin Eunice.
Miss Winn hardly knew whether to be pleased or not. She liked Mr. Saltonstall very much for his gayety, good humor, and fine presence, and then he had the divine gift of youth to match hers. Would she not tire of Chilian Leverett's grave life?