The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866, page 249 by Various Authors
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rd returned from preaching, Betty was at the door to watch. He came past the window with his hands on his breast, and his eyes on the ground, and never saw the flowers in his own window. Betty was disgusted. However, she followed him stealthily as he went to his room, and she heard a profound "Ah!" burst from him.
She bustled in and found him standing in a rapture, with the blood mantling in his pale cheeks, and his dark eyes glowing.
"Now blessed be the heart that hath conceived this thing, and the hand that hath done it," said he. "My poor room, it is a bower of roses, all beauty and fragrance."
And he sat down, inhaling them and looking at them; and a dreamy, tender complacency crept over his heart, and softened his noble features exquisitely.
Widow Gough, red with gratified pride, stood watching him, and admiring him; but, indeed, she often admired him, though she had got into a way of decrying him.
But at last she lost patience at his want of curiosity; that being a defect she was free from herself.
"Ye don't ask me who sent them," said she, reproachfully.
"Nay, nay," said he; "prithee do not tell me: let me divine."
"Divine, then," said Betty, roughly. "Which I suppose you means 'guess.'"
"Nay, but let me be quiet awhile," said he, imploringly; "let me sit down and fancy that I am a holy man, and some angel hath turned my cave into a Paradise."
"No more an angel than I am," said the practical widow. "But, now I think on 't, y' are not to know who 't was. Them as sent them they bade me hold my tongue."
This was not true; but Betty, being herself given to unwise revelations and superfluous secrecy, chose suddenly to assume that this business was to be clandestine.
The priest turned his eye inwards and meditated.
"I see who it is," said he, with an air of absolute conviction. "It must be the lady who comes always when I preach, and her face like none other; it beams with divine intelligence. I will make her