The new, keen voice, irregular and full of life, so unlike the measured tones to which he had been listening, struck the young man uneasily in the midst of his melancholy reverie, which was half trance, half exhaustion. He moved a step away, as if to shake off the interruption, scarcely conscious what, and not at all who it was. “My dear young man, you must come home with me,” she said again. He looked at her, with consciousness re-awakening, and attempted to smile, with his natural ready response to every kindness. “It is you,” he said, and then, “I might have known it could only be you.” What did that mean? Nothing at all. Merely his sense that the one person who had spoken kindly to him, looked tenderly at him (though he had never known why, and had been both amused and embarrassed by the consciousness), was the most likely among all the strangers by whom he was surrounded to be kind to him now. But it produced an effect upon Miss Bethune which was far beyond any meaning it bore. A great light seemed suddenly to blaze over her face; her eyes, which had been so veiled and stern, awoke; every line of a face which could be harsh and almost rigid in repose, began to melt and soften; her composure, which had been almost solemn, failed; her lip began to quiver, tears came dropping upon his arm, which she suddenly clasped with both her hands, clinging to it. “You say right,” she cried, “my dear, my dear!--more right than all the reasons. It is you and nature that makes everything clear. You are just coming home with me.” “I don’t seem,” he said, “to know what the word means.” “But you will soon learn again. God bless the good woman that cherished you and loved you, my bonnie boy. I’ll not say a word against her--oh, no, no! God’s blessing upon her as she lies there. I will never grudge a good word you say of her, never a regret. But now"--she put her arm within his with a proud and tender movement, which so far penetrated his languor as to revive the bewilderment which he had felt before--“now you are coming home with me.”