Christie saw the strong hand that lay on David’s knee clenched slowly, as he knit his brows with a grim look, plainly showing that he was not what she was inclined to think him, a perfect saint.

“Oh, my heart! and there I was loving you so dearly all the time, and you wouldn’t see or speak or understand, but went away, left me to torment all three of us,” cried Christie with a tragic gesture.

“My dearest girl, did you ever know a man in love do, say, or think the right thing at the right time?  I never did,” said David, so penitently that she forgave him on the spot.

“Never mind, dear.  It has taught us the worth of love, and perhaps we are the better for the seeming waste of precious time.  Now I’ve not only got you but Letty also, and your mother is mine in very truth.  Ah, how rich I am!”

“But I thought it was all over with me when I found Letty, because, seeing no more of Fletcher, I had begun to hope again, and when she came back to me I knew my home must be hers, yet feared you would refuse to share it if you knew all.  You are very proud, and the purest-hearted woman I ever knew.”

“And if I had refused, you would have let me go and held fast to Letty?”

“Yes, for I owe her every thing.”

“You should have known me better, David.  But I don’t refuse, and there is no need to choose between us.”

“No, thank heaven, and you, my Christie!  Imagine what I felt when Letty told me all you had been to her.  If any thing could make me love you more than I now do, it would be that!  No, don’t hide your face; I like to see it blush and smile and turn to me confidingly, as it has not done all these long months.”

“Did Letty tell you what she had done for me?” asked Christie, looking more like a rose than ever Kitty did.

“She told me every thing, and wished me to tell you all her story, even the saddest part of it.  I’d better do it now before you meet again.”

He paused as if the tale was hard to tell; but Christie put her hand on his lips saying softly: 

“Never tell it; let her past be as sacred as if she were dead.  She was my friend when I had no other:  she is my dear sister now, and nothing can ever change the love between us.”

If she had thought David’s face beautiful with gratitude when he told the happier portions of that history, she found it doubly so when she spared him the recital of its darkest chapter, and bade him “leave the rest to silence.”

“Now you will come home?  Mother wants you, Letty longs for you, and I have got and mean to keep you all my life, God willing!”

“I’d better die to-night and make a blessed end, for so much happiness is hardly possible in a world of woe,” answered Christie to that fervent invitation.

“We shall be married very soon, take a wedding trip to any part of the world you like, and our honeymoon will last for ever, Mrs. Sterling, Jr.,” said David, soaring away into the future with sublime disregard of obstacles.