Many a time during that month he had thought of this meeting—­had imagined what it would be like—­what would be his manner towards her—­what would be her greeting, and what they would say.  He would be cold, gentle, formal, gallant, gay, sad, trustful, reproachful, even as the moods in which he thought of her came to his foolish brain.  He would always begin with respectful seriousness, or a frankness equal to her own, but never, never again would he offend as he had offended under the buckeyes!  And now, with her pretty face shining upon him, all his plans, his speeches, his preparations vanished, and left him dumb.  Yet he moved towards her with a brief articulate something on his lips,—­something between a laugh and a sigh,—­but that really was a kiss, and—­in point of fact—­promptly folded her in his arms.

Yet it was certainly direct, and perhaps the best that could be done, for the young lady did not emerge from it as coolly, as unemotionally, nor possibly as quickly as she had under the shade of the buckeyes.  But she persuaded him—­by still holding his hand—­to sit beside her on the chilly, highly varnished “green rep” sofa, albeit to him it was a bank in a bower of enchantment.  Then she said, with adorable reproachfulness, “You don’t ask what I did with the body.”

Mr. Edward Brice started.  He was young, and unfamiliar with the evasive expansiveness of the female mind at such supreme moments.

“The body—­oh, yes—­certainly.”

“I buried it myself—­it was suthin too awful!—­and the gang would have been sure to have found it, and the empty belt.  I burned that.  So that nobody knows nothin’.”

It was not a time for strictly grammatical negatives, and I am afraid that the girl’s characteristically familiar speech, even when pathetically corrected here and there by the influence of the convent, endeared her the more to him.  And when she said, “And now, Mr. Edward Brice, sit over at that end of the sofy and let’s talk,” they talked.  They talked for an hour, more or less continuously, until they were surprised by a discreet cough and the entrance of Mrs. Tarbox.  Then there was more talk, and the discovery that Mr. Brice was long due at the office.

“Ye might drop in, now and then, whenever ye feel like it, and Flo is at home,” suggested Mrs. Tarbox at parting.

Mr. Brice did drop in frequently during the next month.  On one of these occasions Mr. Tarbox accompanied him to the door.  “And now—­ez everything is settled and in order, Mr. Brice, and ef you should be wantin’ to say anything about it to your bosses at the office, ye may mention my name ez Flo Dimwood’s second cousin, and say I’m a depositor in their bank.  And,” with greater deliberation, “ef anything at any time should be thrown up at ye for marryin’ a niece o’ Snapshot Harry’s, ye might mention, keerless like, that Snapshot Harry, under the name o’ Henry J. Dimwood, has held shares in their old bank for years!”