"After a while? What hope has after a while? It cannot bring back the lost; and does memory ever die? After a while has not given me my mother; after a while has not taught me to forget her, or made me more patient in my waiting. After a while I know death will come to us all, and then there will be no more heartache; but I can't see that there is any comfort in after a while, except beyond the grave. Mrs. Lindsay, I do not wish to be wicked or rebellious, but it seems very hard that I must leave this dear quiet home, and be separated from you and Mr. Lindsay whom I dearly love, and go and live in a city, with that cold, hard, harsh, stern man, of whom I am so much afraid. He may mean well, but he has such unkind ways of showing it. You have no idea how dreadful the future looks to me." She spoke drearily, and in the fitful flashes of the firelight the young face looked unnaturally stern. "My dear child, you must not despond; at your age one must try to see only the bright side. If I expected to remain in America, I would not give you up without a struggle; would beg your mother's permission to keep you until she claimed you. But I shall only wait to learn that Douglass has arranged for my arrival. As you know, my sister and brother-in-law are in Egypt, and if I were with them in Cairo, I could hear more regularly and frequently from my dear boy. I wish I could keep you, for you have grown deep into my heart, but my own future is too uncertain to allow me to involve any one else in my plans." "I understand the circumstances, but if mother only knew everything, I believe she would not doom me to the care of that man of stone. Oh, if you could only take me across the ocean, and let me go to Venice to mother." Mrs. Lindsay tightened her arm around the erect slender figure, and gently stroked back the hair from her temples.