“Darling, God has given you to me; I acknowledge the giver as I take the gift. From that first moment when I met you in the Art Gallery in Philadelphia until now this mighty love has been growing within me.”
“In the Art Gallery?” questioned Brownie, with a puzzled look.
“Yes, when your friend, Miss Huntington, met with such a series of accidents.”
“Oh, was that you with Mr. Gordon?” she demanded, her face dimpling at the remembrance, and she eagerly searched his face. “I remember now; it has haunted me like a strange dream ever since I met you on the boat, where I had seen you before. Now it all comes back to me,” she said.
“I found something that day which belongs to you, but not in season to return it to you then,” Adrian said.
He took from his pocket as he spoke the elegant sleeve button, which he had always carried with him since.
Brownie exclaimed, joyously, as she saw it:
“Oh, how glad I am to get it—I never thought to see it again; and you have had it all this time?”
“Yes, darling—my Brownie—how I have longed to say it—and I vowed then that I would only yield it up into your own little hands.”
“It belonged to auntie once,” she explained, “and there are associations connected with it which make it very dear to me.”