“Where does Cynthia-live?” he demanded, coming straight to the point.

Ephraim stared at him for a moment in a bewildered fashion, and then a light began to dawn on him.

“Lives with me,” he answered.  He was quite as ashamed, for Bob’s sake, as if he himself had asked the question, and he went on talking to cover that embarrassment.  “It’s made some difference, too, sence she come.  House looks like a different place.  Afore she, come I cooked with a kit, same as I used to in the harness shop.  I l’arned it in the army.  Cynthy’s got a stove.”

It was not the way Ephraim would have gone about a love affair, had he had one.  Sam Price’s were the approved methods in that section of the country, though Sam had overdone them somewhat.  It was an unheard-of thing to ask a man right out like that where a girl lived.

“Much obliged,” said Bob, and was gone.  Ephraim raised his hands in despair, and hobbled to the little window to get a last look at him.  Where were the proprieties in these days?  The other aspect of the affair, what Mr. Worthington would think of it when he returned, did not occur to the innocent mind of the old soldier until people began to talk about it that afternoon.  Then it worried him into another attack of rheumatism.

Half of Brampton must have seen Bob Worthington march up to the little yellow house which Ephraim had rented from John Billings.  It had four rooms around the big chimney in the middle, and that was all.  Simple as it was, an architect would have said that its proportions were nearly perfect.  John Billings had it from his Grandfather Post, who built it, and though Brampton would have laughed at the statement, Isaac D. Worthington’s mansion was not to be compared with it for beauty.  The old cherry furniture was still in it, and the old wall papers and the panelling in the little room to the right which Cynthia had made into a sitting room.

Half of Brampton, too, must have seen Cynthia open the door and Bob walk into the entry.  Then the door was shut.  But it had been held open for an appreciable time, however,—­while you could count twenty,—­because Cynthia had not the power to close it.  For a while she could only look into his eyes, and he into hers.  She had not seen him coming, she had but answered the knock.  Then, slowly, the color came into her cheeks, and she knew that she was trembling from head to foot.

“Cynthia,” he said, “mayn’t I come in?”

She did not answer, for fear her voice would tremble, too.  And she could not send him away in the face of all Brampton.  She opened the door a little wider, a very little, and he went in.  Then she closed it, and for a moment they stood facing each other in the entry, which was lighted only by the fan-light over the door, Cynthia with her back against the wall.  He spoke her name again, his voice thick with the passion which had overtaken him like a flood at the sight of her—­a passion to seize her in his arms, and cherish and comfort and protect her forever and ever.  All this he felt and more as he looked into her face and saw the traces of her great sorrow there.  He had not thought that that face could be more beautiful in its strength and purity, but it was even so.