Deborah held her head very straight--"to achieve whist is the work
of a lifetime! I've no patience with a young person who says a thing like
that."

Miss Ruth was silenced for a moment; she had no excuse to offer.

"Adele Dale says the Forsythes are coming back in April," she said, at
last.

"Yes, I know it," answered Miss Deborah. "I suppose it will all be
arranged then. I asked Adele if Lois was engaged to him;--she said, 'Not
formally.' But I've no doubt there's an understanding."

Miss Deborah was so sure of this that she had even mentioned it casually
to Gifford, of course under the same seal of confidence with which it had
been told her.

It was quite true that Dick and his mother were to return to Ashurst.
After storming out of the rectory library the night of the Misses
Woodhouse's dinner party, Dick had had a period of hatred of everything
connected with Ashurst; but that did not last more than a month, and was
followed by an imploring letter to Lois. Her answer brought the anger
back again, and then its reaction of love; this see-saw was kept up,
until his last letter had announced that he and his mother were coming
to take the house they had had before, and spend the summer.

"We will come early," he wrote. "I cannot stay away. I have made mother
promise to open the house in April, so in a month more I shall see you.
I had an awful time to get her to come; she hates the country except in
summer, but at last she said she would. She knows why I want to come, and