At last Ogilvie returned, bringing Grace Tobet with him, and Rosamund was free to go home with Father Cary.
But there must first be the inevitable moment when she and Ogilvie should stand face to face. It happened simply enough. Grace had taken Rosamund's place beside the fire, replenished now through Father Cary's efforts in the outer shed; the old man had gone out for a last armful of wood, and Rosamund was about to take down her coat from its nail on the door.
Then, somehow, Ogilvie was standing before her. He looked at her with trembling lips; he did not dare to trust himself to speak. He could only hold out his hands.
She turned her tired face up to him, looking, searchingly, it seemed, into his eyes. Then, smiling, she laid her hands for the breath of a moment in his, and with a little gasp reached for her coat and ran out to join Father Cary.
She was glad that Eleanor's departure, and the rain, kept them apart for a few days after that. She dreaded the restraint that she thought they both must feel when they should meet; but, when the meeting came at last, there was no embarrassment at all.
Father Cary had left her at the Summit and she meant to walk back to the house on the mountain, to make the most of the first clear day after the rain. There was a little brown house, set on the brow of the hill overlooking the valley, almost opposite the mountain whence Mother Cary's light shone every night. Rosamund had often noticed the little place, and to-day, at the store, she had heard the men talking about it. The man who owned it had come from the city a year or so before, with his wife, to be near Doctor Ogilvie. They were young, and the young do not see very far ahead. It had seemed to them in their distress that they would have to stay there forever; they had done many things to the little house, and put into it many of the comforts they had been used to. Now the man was well, and they were going back to the city.
"Want to sell out," the postmaster had told her. "Humph! Wouldn't mind sellin' out myself! Like to know who's going to buy prop'ty up here, this time o' year!"
So, as she approached the little house on her way home, Rosamund was busily thinking about it. Perhaps, subconsciously, the idea had been a long time growing in her mind; but when she turned the last bend in the road that hid the house from her view, a plan seemed to burst upon her with all the novelty of a revelation. She stood still, looking first at the house, then across the valley towards the place which had sheltered her all summer. She was not aware that a vehicle drawn by a familiar white horse was just turning out of a wood-road into the highway, scarcely ten yards behind her.
But Ogilvie, in the sudden gladness of thus unexpectedly coming upon her, called out.
"Oh, good luck! Let me give you a lift, won't you?"