“The sight of our dear little woman,” said Richard, Ada still remaining silent and quiet, “is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days—­”

Ah!  No, no.  I smiled and shook my head.

“—­So exactly like the face of old days,” said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, “that I can’t make pretences with her.  I fluctuate a little; that’s the truth.  Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I—­don’t quite despair, but nearly.  I get,” said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, “so tired!”

He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa.  “I get,” he repeated gloomily, “so tired.  It is such weary, weary work!”

He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me.  Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!

“Esther, dear,” she said very quietly, “I am not going home again.”

A light shone in upon me all at once.

“Never any more.  I am going to stay with my dear husband.  We have been married above two months.  Go home without me, my own Esther; I shall never go home any more!” With those words my darling drew his head down on her breast and held it there.  And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me.

“Speak to Esther, my dearest,” said Richard, breaking the silence presently.  “Tell her how it was.”

I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms.  We neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to hear nothing.  “My pet,” said I.  “My love.  My poor, poor girl!” I pitied her so much.  I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that I had upon me was to pity her so much.

“Esther, will you forgive me?  Will my cousin John forgive me?”

“My dear,” said I, “to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great wrong.  And as to me!” Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!

I dried my sobbing darling’s eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so different night when they had first taken me into their confidence and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it was.

“All I had was Richard’s,” Ada said; “and Richard would not take it, Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!”

“And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame Durden,” said Richard, “that how could we speak to you at such a time!  And besides, it was not a long-considered step.  We went out one morning and were married.”

“And when it was done, Esther,” said my darling, “I was always thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best.  And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted very much.”