Rose nodded delightedly at Sylvia, and the dressmaker came and made the gown according to Rose’s directions.  Sylvia wore it for the first time when she walked from church with Lucinda Hart and found Rose and Horace sitting in the grove.  After Rose had replied to Sylvia’s advice that she should go into the house, she looked at her with the pride of proprietorship.  “Doesn’t she look simply lovely?” she asked Horace.

“She certainly does,” replied the young man.  He really gazed admiringly at the older woman, who made, under the glimmering shadows of the oaks, a charming nocturne of elderly womanhood.  The faint pink on her cheeks seemed enhanced by the pink seen dimly through the ashen shimmer of her gown; the creamy lace harmonized with her yellow-gray hair.  She was in her own way as charming as Rose in hers.

Sylvia actually blushed, and hung her head with a graceful sidewise motion.  “I’m too old to be made a fool of,” said she, “and I’ve got a good looking-glass.”  But she smiled the smile of a pretty woman conscious of her own prettiness.  Then all three laughed, although Horace but a moment before had looked very grave, and now he was quite white.  Sylvia noticed it.  “Why, what ails you, Mr. Allen?” she said.  “Don’t you feel well?”

“Perfectly well.”

“You look pale.”

“It is the shadow of the oaks.”

Sylvia noticed a dainty little white box in Rose’s lap.  “What is that?” she asked.

“It is a box of candy that dear, sweet Lucy Ayres who sang to-day made her own self and gave to me,” replied Rose.  “She came up to me on the way home from church and slipped it into my hand, and I hardly know her at all.  I do think it is too dear of her for anything.  She is such a lovely girl, and her voice is beautiful.”  Rose looked defiantly at Horace.  “Mr. Allen has been trying to make me promise not to eat this nice candy,” she said.

“I don’t think candy is good for anybody, and girls eat altogether too much of it,” said Horace, with a strange fervor which the occasion hardly seemed to warrant.

“Wouldn’t I know he was a school-teacher when I heard him speak like that, even if nobody had ever told me?” said Rose.  “Of course I am going to eat this candy that dear Lucy made her own self and gave me.  I should be very ungrateful not to, and I love candy, too.”

“I will send for some to Boston to-morrow,” cried Horace, eagerly.

Rose regarded him with amazement.  “Why, Mr. Allen, you just said you did not approve of candy at all, and here you are proposing to send for some for me,” she said, “when I have this nice home-made candy, a great deal purer, because one knows exactly what is in it, and you say I must not eat this.”

Rose took up a sugared almond daintily and put it to her lips, but Horace was too quick for her.  Before she knew what he was about he had dashed it from her hand, and in the tumult the whole box of candy was scattered.  Horace trampled on it, it was impossible to say whether purposely or accidentally, in the struggle.