"What could have been his motive?" asked Abner.
"Motive? Any one of a thousand things might have been his motive. He might have done it with the hope of securing a reward for the recovery of the child, or he may thus have taken revenge for some real or fancied wrong, or he may have been hired by the parents."
"Come, Irene," said the young officer when tea was over. "I want to look around the old place once more."
They paused in the garden, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of Summer flowers, and pulsating with the evening songs of birds.
"I never come out here now," said Irene. "It is so lonesome with you and Oleah so far away," and sat down upon a rustic seat.
As Abner gazed into the depths of those soft, gray eyes he thought so much beauty had never before been concentrated in one being. Irene's goodness of heart he had learned to know long ago. He was he thought, almost on the eve of discovering her parentage, but he determined to win her, be it high or low.
"Irene," he said, "I am glad to be once more in this dear old home, to be once more with the parents I love; but the greatest happiness of all is to have you again by my side."
"O Abner," she answered, lifting her earnest, tearful eyes, "do not say to me again what you said to me that last night! It breaks my heart to give you pain, but I know that you are wrong, that you have mistaken your own feelings. I have loved you so long as a sister! Oh, how terribly all things have changed! Do not you change, Abner! Be my brother still!"
"Let what is broken so remain,
The gods are hard to reconcile,"