“How glad I am to find you alone!” he said. “What a relief it is to get here at last! I am tired, and dead beat, and sick and sorry, dear. Now I can breathe and rest.” “You have been long, long of coming,” said Gussy, half wearily, half reproachfully. “Haven’t I? It seems about a year since I arrived this morning, and not able to get near you till now. Gussy, tell me, first of all, did you see it?--do you know?” “What?” Her heart was melting--all the pain and all the anger, quite unreasonably as they had risen, floating away. “Our Consulship,” he said, opening up his newspaper with one hand, and spreading it out, to be held by the other hand, on the other side of her. The two heads bent close together to look at this blessed announcement. “Not much for you, my darling--for me everything,” said Edgar, with a voice in which bells of joy seemed to be ringing, dancing, jostling against each other for very gladness. “I was half afraid you would see it before I brought the news.” “I had no heart to look at the paper this morning,” she said. “No heart! Something has happened? Your father--Harry--what is it?” cried Edgar, in alarm. “Oh! nothing,” cried Gussy, crying. “I was unhappy, that was all. I did not know what you would say to me. I thought you did not care for me. I had doubts, dreadful doubts! Don’t ask me any more.” “Doubts--of me!” cried Edgar, with a surprised, frank laugh. Never in her life had Gussy felt so much ashamed of herself. She did not venture to say another word about those doubts which, with such laughing, pleasant indifference, he had dismissed as impossible. She sat in a dream while he told her everything, hearing it all like a tale that she had read in a book. He brought out the old watch and gave it to her, and she kissed it and put it within her dress, and cried when he described to her the last words of his old mother. Loch Arroch and all its homely circumstances became as a scene of the Scriptures to Gussy; she seemed to see a glory of ideal hills and waters, and the moonlight filling the sky and earth, and the loveliness of the night which made it look “but a step” between earth and heaven. Her heart grew so full over those details that Edgar, unsuspicious, never discovered the compunction which mingled in that sympathetic grief. He told her about his journey; then paused, and looked her in the eyes. “Last year it was you who travelled with me. You were the little sister?” he said. “Ah! yes, I know it was you. You came and kissed me in my sleep----” “Indeed I did not, sir!” cried Gussy, in high indignation. “I would not have done such a thing for all the world.” Edgar laughed, and held her so fast that she could not turn from him. “You did in spirit,” he said; “and I had it in a dream. Ever since I have had a kind of hope in my life; I dreamt that you put the veil aside, and I saw you. When I woke I could not believe it, though I knew it; but the other sister, the real one, would not tell me your name.”