With a sweep of her fan Mistress Mary renounced her waning youth.
"Stay with you!" she cried, "that will I! and you and I from the window will superintend our dear young ones. Alas!" she said, with a languishing look, "how lonely the house will seem when you are bereft of your daughter."
Mr. Ives sighed deeply.
Outside in the gloaming, Betty Ives and her young lover walked slowly backwards and forwards under the orchard trees.
"No father, no mother, no sisters!" she said, looking up into his face. "No one to love, no one to love you!"
"I do not know whether I am to be pitied," he answered with a light laugh. "My life has been one of strange vicissitudes. No, no, sweet Bet; I have often thanked God that no one shared my life."
"But you will never do so again," she said earnestly.
"Sweetheart!" he answered. "Until you have once drunk of the cup of happiness you know not what it is; but once tasted, you can ill spare it thenceforth."
"Ah, some day you will tell me about this life of yours—will you not?"
"Some day, my heart, when you and I are alone together in the fair woods of Belton—when you are my precious wife, and when days have passed on, and our full trust and confidence each in the other is proved and strengthened by time. But not now, beloved, not now."