Meanwhile Grace’s servant came up to accompany her home, and she bade the happy group good night, her heart beating faster than its wont as Richard said to her at parting, “I was going to offer my services, but see I am forestalled.  My usual luck, you know,” and his black eyes rested a moment, on her face and then wandered to where Edith sat.  Did he mean anything by this?  Had the waves of time, which had beaten and battered his heart so long, brought it back at last to its first starting point, Grace Elmendorff?  Time only can tell.  He believed his youthful passion had died out years ago, that matrimony was for him an utter impossibility.

He had been comparatively happy across the sea, and he was happier still now that he was at home, wishing he had come before, and wondering why it was that the sight of Edith did not pain him, as he feared it would.  He liked to look at her, to hear her musical voice, to watch her graceful movements as she flitted about the house, and as the days and weeks went on he grew young again in her society, until he was much like the Richard to whom she once said, “I will be your wife,” save that his raven hair was tinged with grey, making him, as some thought, finer-looking than ever.  To Arthur and Edith he was like a dearly beloved brother; while to Dick and Nina he was all the world.  He was very proud of little Dick, but Nina was his pet, as she was every body’s who knew her, and she ere long learned to love him better, if possible, than she did her father, calling him frequently “her oldest papa,” and wondering in her childish way why he kissed so tenderly as often as she lisped out that dear name.

And now but little more remains to tell.  It is four months since Richard came home, and the hazy Indian summer sun shines o’er the New England hills, bathing Collingwood in its soft, warm rays, and falling upon the tall bare trees and the withered grass below, carpeted with leaves of many a bright hue.  On the velvety sward, which last summer showed so rich a green, the children are racing up and down, Dick’s cheeks glowing like the scarlet foliage he treads beneath his feet, and Nina’s fair hair tossing in the autumn wind, which seems to blow less rudely on the little girl than on her stronger older brother.  On one of the iron seats scattered over the lawn sits Richard; watching them as they play, not moodily, not mournfully, for grief and sorrow have no lodgment in the once blind Richard’s heart, and he verily believes that he is as happy without Edith as he could possibly have been with her.  She is almost everything to him now that a wife could be consulting his wishes before her own, or Arthur’s, and making all else subservient to them.  No royal sovereign ever lorded it over his subjects more completely than could Richard over Collingwood, if he chose, for master and servants alike yield him unbounded deference; but Richard is far too gentle to abuse the power vested in his hands and so he rules by perfect love, which knows no shadow of distrust.  The gift of sight has compensated for all his olden pain, and often to himself he says, “I would hardly be blind again for the sake of Edith’s first affections.”