A few more days slipped by, easily and swiftly, as all days did in Joppa. The famous party was discussed and re-discussed down to its minutest details. Mrs. Hardcastle recovered from her subsequent attack of neuralgia. Mr. Hardcastle, who went from house to house, gathering compliments as an assessor levies taxes, completed the round of the village and began again. Mrs. Upjohn asked for and obtained the recipe of a certain dish, the like of which had never before been seen in Joppa, and the Joppites commended her boldness in asking and condemned Mrs. Hardcastle’s weakness in giving. The report that Mr. Upjohn had apostatized from the Presbyterian Church, disapproving of its tenets as regarded waltzing, was duly started, denied, violently adopted, and as violently exploded. The statements that Jake Dexter was engaged to Nellie Atterbury, that Bell Masters had offered herself to Mr. Halloway and been declined with thanks, and that Gerald’s hat had been imported from Paris two days before, were also duly aired and evaporated. It had, moreover, by this time become a town fact, that it was Bell Masters and not Janet Mudge whom Halloway had rowed to the party, and that he had walked home with Mrs. Lane. Miss Brooks overheard him taking leave of her at her door, and fancied but was not sure that she told him to change his boots lest his feet should be damp. Everybody had also found out beyond discussion or doubt that De Forest was Gerald’s escort home on that occasion, but that the engagement between them was broken off. It was definitely known that he had said he was a blighted being, and should shortly take a return ticket to New York. Everybody said it was a shame, when they were so manifestly cut out for each other. In fact, every thing had been found out about every thing. The evening had been talked threadbare, and, alas, there was nothing else to talk about. Phebe’s reappearance downstairs, unscarred and bonnie as ever, was become an old story long since, and Dr. Dennis’ treatment of the case was now admitted to have been the very best possible next to what Dr. Harrison’s treatment would have been, though by all means, it was decided, Dr. Dennis and not Dr. Harrison should have been called in when Mr. Brown, the grocer, fell ill of a fever. Poor Joppa was indeed fairly talked out. It had to settle down upon the fever and Mr. Brown for lack of any thing else. It was really almost a godsend when Mrs. Brown took the fever too, for it gave Joppa just twice as much to talk about, and everybody said it was somebody’s duty to see that the poor souls had right advice in the matter. Jabez Brown, Jr., carried on the business in his father’s stead, and measured out his sugars and teas at so much advice the pound, and did a thriving business, but the poor old father died all the same. He was a respectable, honest man, and all his customers attended his funeral in the most neighborly way in the world, with a grim look upon their sympathetic countenances of “I told you so. It should have been Dr. Dennis.”

Yes, to all but Phebe, her illness and long imprisonment and her return to matter-of-fact life downstairs, was a tame-enough story now. But to her it was as the opening chapter of a new history. Life seemed changed and strange to her when she stepped back into it, and took up again the duties and labors that she had laid by only so lately. Had she dreamed herself into another world, or why was it so hard to put herself back into the place she had stepped out of? Everybody about her was the same; nothing had really changed in any way, and certainly she had not. Neither had Gerald. Neither had Mr. Halloway. What had she expected? What was it she had vaguely looked forward to? What was it that was so different?

“Pray, what are you thinking of?” Denham asked suddenly one day, turning to her with his bright, sweet smile. “You have been quiet for very long.”

“So have you been quiet,” returned Phebe. “I do not think I have been any less talkative than you.”

“Perhaps not,” said Denham. “We are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not? But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what were you thinking of?”

“I don’t quite know,” answered Phebe, slowly. “But I think I was wishing for impossibilities, for things that can’t possibly happen, just because it would be so nice if they could.”

“Ah,” said Halloway, dreamily. “That is a very bad habit, a frightfully unsatisfactory, delusive, and, indeed, an altogether pernicious habit, Miss Phebe. It takes the taste out of every thing solid, and leaves one an appetite only for indigestible sweets. I must correct you of it. I will, just as soon, that is, as I have broken myself of it. Will you wait till I have taken myself in hand?”

They were together sitting in a little recess of the rectory parlor, while Mrs. Whittridge and Gerald were talking at the farther end of the room. Soeur Angelique had invited the two girls to tea, and Halloway, when he came in from his study, seated himself at once by Phebe, though after his warm greeting and self-congratulations upon having her back in her old haunts, he had fallen into quite an unusual silence. Phebe was looking very sweet and fresh that afternoon. All the care that she had meant to devote to her toilet upon the occasion of her first meeting with Halloway, she had expended in dressing herself for this visit to the rectory. Never had her shining hair been braided so glossily, or coaxed into waving more prettily about her forehead; never had the simple etceteras of her dress been more studiously selected and more carefully put together. Looking in the glass when all was done, she had been fain to confess that she really did look nice for once, though she reproached herself immediately afterward in severest terms for the unpardonable vanity of the thought, and made a little grimace at her own image to effectually dispel the illusion. What could it ever matter how she looked? And particularly how could it matter when Gerald was by, Gerald, who possessed that rare and enviable gift of always looking her best? So Phebe put the subject of her looks entirely away from her mind, and leaned back on the sofa, her hands folded idly in her lap, feeling perfectly content with the passing moment, and asking nothing from the future but that it might be always “now.” What more could she want? The room held her three dearest friends in the world, Gerald, Soeur Angelique, and Mr. Halloway; of course one should always put ladies before gentlemen even only in thought. How handsome Gerald looked as she stood with her head slightly bent forward, listening to Mrs. Whittridge. If Gerald did not choose to listen, no one could ever force her to lend an ear. But when she did so choose, she listened with her whole mind, and was lost to all else. Phebe smiled with quiet amusement at her friend’s intensity in every thing, and turned with the smile on her face to Halloway. He was not smiling at all, but he too was looking fixedly at Gerald.

“It has been lovely having her here, but how we shall miss her, shall we not, when she goes?” said Phebe, softly.

“Goes?” repeated Halloway, blankly. “It is scarcely September yet.”

“What, have you not heard?” exclaimed Phebe. “Do you not know? Gerald has been sent for. She and Olly go back next Thursday.”

“Thursday?” echoed Halloway, in a sort of stunned way. “So soon? Going for good? Thursday?”

What closely guarded secret did the loving gray eyes, fastened upon him, read in the swift, uncontrollable look that flashed suddenly across his face, like the lightning that leaps out of the dark by night, laying all earth bare in one brief, vivid glimpse? He was so taken by surprise as to be completely off guard. It was but an instant, and with a start he recovered himself.

“I had not heard your news,” he said, with perfect quiet, reaching out to the table for an uncut magazine, and proceeding leisurely to open its pages. “I suppose it is a sign that summer is over when the birds begin to fly home.”

Phebe did not answer immediately. In that one short moment, all her face had changed also. As by the stroke of a wand, its brightness and sweet content had given place to an expression of unutterable weariness. She got up and went to the window, standing with her back to Halloway.

“We had our first cold night that evening of my accident,” she said, with an effort to speak very calmly. “I think the summer really ended then.”