A Book o' Nine Tales. Bates Arlo

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      He hurried downstairs, and in the old-fashioned hall, stately with its wainscoting and antique carved furniture, he met Columbine coming towards him. Like his, her eyes shone with a new light, her lips were parted with excitement, and her step was eager.

      “Good-morning, Mr. Wainwright,” she fluted in a voice high with excitement and joyousness. “I heard your step, and could not wait for you to get to the parlor.”

      “Good heavens!” cried he, stopping short in amazement. “How did you know? Are you a witch?”

      “No,” she laughed, pleasure and excitement mingling rather dangerously in her mood. “Nothing of the sort, I assure you; though one of my ancestors was tried for witchcraft at Salem. Cousin Tom sent me this advertisement, and I knew at once that it must be you.”

      The advertisement she showed him was cut from a New York paper, and called, with a detailed description of the personal appearance of the missing man, for tidings of one Thomas Wainwright, of Baltimore, supposed to have perished in the wreck of the Sound steamer, and whose large estate was unsettled. Tom read it over with mingled feelings.

      “Bah!” he said. “When I get home I shall only have to look over a file of the daily papers to read my obituary. Fortunately I have been back from India so few years that they cannot say a great deal about me.”

      “De mortuis,” returned Columbine, smiling. “They will only say good of you. I congratulate you on having found your name.”

      “I had it before you told me,” he said.

      He took her hands in his and looked at her tenderly.

      “I have all my past, too,” he went on. “I am free; I have nothing to hide; nothing stands between us. Will you be my wife, Columbine?”

      She grew pale as ashes; then flushed celestial red; but her eyes did not flinch.

      “I trust you utterly,” she answered him. “And I love you no less.”