“You can’t be so down in the mouth when you’re listenin’ to him,” was another comment which reached ears strained to attention.  “You feel like there was some good livin’, after all.  Did Liz come, d’ye know?  She needs somethin’ to make her buck up.  If she’d jest hear him—­”

Brown remained in the room till almost the last were gone.  The two strangers waited at the door, their backs turned to the room, as if in conference.  Several women stayed to speak with the man who had talked to them, and the waiting ones could hear his low tones, the same friendly, comprehending, interested tones to which St. Timothy’s had grown so happily accustomed.  At length the last lingerer passed the two by the door, and Brown, approaching, spoke to them.

“Did you want to see me?  Is there anything I can do?” he began—­and the two strangers turned.

His astonished gaze fell first upon Mrs. Brainard, her fine and glowing eyes fixed upon him with both mirth and tenderness in their look.  She had been deeply touched by the sights and sounds of the hour just passed, yet the surprise she had in store for her friend, Donald Brown, was moving her also, and her smile at him from under the plain little hat she wore was a brilliant one.  But he stared at her for a full ten seconds before he could believe the testimony of his eyes.  Was this—­could this possibly be—­the lady of the distinguished dress and bearing, who stood before him in her cheap suit of serge, with a little gray cotton glove upon the hand she held out to him?

He seized the hand and wrung it, as if the very contact was much to him.  His face broke into a smile of joy as he said fervently, “I don’t know how this happens, but it’s enough for me that it does.”

“I’m not the only one present, Don,” said the lady, laughing, and turned to her companion.

If he had given the second figure a thought as he recognized his old friend, it was to suppose her some working-girl who had conducted the stranger to the place.  But now he looked, and saw Helena Forrest.

“You!” he breathed, and stood transfixed.

Miss Forrest had always been, though never conspicuously dressed, such a figure of quiet elegance that one who knew her could almost recognize her with her face quite out of sight.  Now, without a single accessory of the sort which stands for high-bred fashion, her beauty flashed at Brown like that of one bright star in a sky of midnight gloom.  She was not smiling, she was looking straight at him with her wonderful eyes, and in them was a strange and bewildering appeal.

For a moment he could not speak—­he, who had been so eloquent within her hearing for the hour past.  He looked at her, and looked again at Mrs. Brainard, and back at Helena again, and then he stammered, “I can’t—­quite—­believe it is you—­either of you!” and laughed at his own confusion, his face flushing darkly under the skin, clear to the roots of the heavy locks on his forehead.