The minister sat down gladly, his old heart yearning toward Araminta as toward a loved and only child.  “Where is your aunt?” he asked, timidly.

“Goodness knows,” laughed Araminta, irreverently.  “She’s gone out, in all her best clothes.  She didn’t say whether she was coming back or not.”

Thorpe was startled, for he had never heard speech like this from Araminta.  He knew her only as a docile, timid child.  Now, she seemed suddenly to have grown up.

For her part, Araminta remembered how the minister had once helped her out of a difficulty, and taken away from her forever the terrible, haunting fear of hell.  Here was a dazzling opportunity to acquire new knowledge.

“Mr. Thorpe,” she demanded, eagerly, “what is it to be married?”

“To be married,” repeated Austin Thorpe, dreamily, his eyes fixed upon a firefly that flitted, star-tike, near the rose, “is, I think, the nearest this world can come to Heaven.”

“Oh!” cried Araminta, in astonishment.  “What does it mean?”

“It means,” answered Thorpe, softly, “that a man and a woman whom God meant to be mated have found each other at last.  It means there is nothing in the world that you have to face alone, that all your joys are doubled and all your sorrows shared.  It means that there is no depth into which you can go alone, that one other hand is always in yours; trusting, clinging, tender, to help you bear whatever comes.

“It means that the infinite love has been given, in part, to you, for daily strength and comfort.  It is a balm for every wound, a spur for every lagging, a sure dependence in every weakness, a belief in every doubt.  The perfect being is neither man nor woman, but a merging of dual natures into a united whole.  To be married gives a man a woman’s tenderness; a woman, a man’s courage.  The long years stretch before them, and what lies beyond no one can say, but they face it, smiling and serene, because they are together.”

“My mother was married,” said Araminta, softly.  All at once, the stain of disgrace was wiped out.

“Yes, dear child, and, I hope, to the man she loved, as I hope that some day you will be married to the man who loves you.”

Araminta’s whole heart yearned toward Ralph—­yearned unspeakably.  In something else, surely, Aunt Hitty was wrong.

“Araminta,” said Thorpe, his voice shaking; “dear child, come here.”

She followed him into the house.  His trembling old hands lighted a candle and she saw that his eyes were full of tears.  From an inner pocket, he drew out a small case, wrapped in many thicknesses of worn paper.  He unwound it reverently, his face alight with a look she had never seen there before.

“See!” he said.  He opened the ornate case and showed her an old daguerreotype.  A sweet, girlish face looked out at her, a woman with trusting, loving eyes, a sweet mouth, and dark, softly parted hair.