Frankfort could not help glancing towards Eleanor. She seemed unconscious of any one's presence: verily, if by nature she was intended for loftier purposes, some deep sorrow had stricken her, and she was of a surety belonging to the "meek-spirited of the earth." Large tears were stealing slowly and silently down that young and faded face, and fell in diamond drops unheeded on her sable garb; there were others weeping in that place of prayer besides herself but these sorrowed not without hope. If she had hope, it was evidently not of this earth; and Frankfort was more convinced of this every hour he passed in her presence, a presence felt more than he liked to acknowledge to himself, for she had evidently not a thought to bestow on him. Her mother's eyes were fixed upon her; Mrs Daveney was seated beside the reader, Eleanor in a corner where there fell but little light. Still the watchful gaze seemed to pierce the mourner's very soul, and Frankfort, a keen observer of countenance, read in that mother's eye anxiety, tenderness, yet something of reproach. "Let us join in prayer," said the teacher, and, for the first time since he had left England, Ormsby found himself kneeling in a home congregation. He could not follow the teacher,--he was back again in the old dim library, a little boy, at his mother's side, with his hand clasped in hers. Perhaps at this very hour [there is little variation of time between Europe and South Africa] they were all assembled there,--master, mistress, children, servants on whose heads Time had shed his snow, even where they had then stood,--while the soldier son was wandering in distant countries.