“You are looking for Vi, captain?” Grandma Elsie said inquiringly and with a smile. “She is engaged in piloting Cousin Mary about, showing her the places made memorable by having been the scenes of notable events in her mother’s life when this was her own and her father’s home. I believe they have gone down to what is still called Elsie’s arbor.”
“Ah?” he returned, “and my companionship would hardly be welcome just at present, I presume.”
“I cannot say, sir, but see no reason why it should not be,” she answered, and thanking her, he at once set off in the direction of the arbor, which was of course no unknown spot to him.
He found the ladies there, sitting together, gazing out upon the lovely landscape—the verdant valley, the clear waters of the swiftly flowing river, and the woods clad in the deep green of their summer robes. Violet was speaking in low, feeling tones, Mary listening evidently with intense interest. Violet had been telling of scenes and occurrences described in “Elsie’s girlhood”—the time when Arthur, in a fury of passion because she refused to advance him money without her father’s knowledge and consent, even went so far as to strike her, and was immediately soundly thrashed for it by Mr. Travilla; the time when Jackson, her discarded lover, discarded at first in obedience to her father’s command, afterward loathed by her when she had learned for herself that he was a villain of deepest dye instead of the honorable, virtuous man she had formerly esteemed him, came so unexpectedly upon her there, sitting alone and undefended, and with a loaded pistol threatened her life unless she would promise never to marry Mr. Travilla; but now Violet’s theme was her father’s confession of his love, and her mother’s glad surprise—the sweet story told to her by that mother herself since the dear father’s death.
“Mamma told it to me after I had heard the same sweet story from the lips of my own dear husband,” were the words that reached the captain’s ear as he stepped into the arbor, and as she turned at the sound their eyes met with a look of love as ardent and intense as any ever bestowed by either one upon the other: they were as truly lovers now as they had been five years before.