It was so great a shock to Mrs. Tascher that she scarcely left her room for ten days after it, and indeed did not wholly recover until another letter came, dated from far-off Syria, with a curious commingling of the strange and the familiar in the well-known handwriting and the foreign post-mark, assuring her that her young friend was safely sheltered under the protection of her guardian and his estimable wife. Ruth dwelt entirely upon her new experience, and never mentioned the old. She had not so much to say about her journey, though it was interesting and delightful, as about her arrival and the meeting with her dear friends, whose loved faces were so sweetly familiar in that strange, strange land that she fell upon their necks and wept. She drew vivid pictures of the magnificent scenery that lay around her in her new home--the gardens, the orange-groves, the figs and olives, the terraced slope of Mount Lebanon, the glorious Mediterranean. Mrs. Tascher was comforted, though the void made by Ruth's absence was almost like death, the wide space seemed so unspannable. She wrote back at once in all the fulness of her heart, and Ruth was not so absorbed in grief for the loss of her lover but that she appreciated and was deeply grateful for the tender, unfailing affection of her friend. Mrs. Tascher, who felt that the sharpest knife was the best to be used in a case of urgent surgical necessity, wrote briefly that the doctor and Miss Custer were married--that Miss Custer had begged for at least three months' preparation, but the doctor was impatient; and so, as soon as she was able to stand the journey to Boston, where her friends and property were, they had joined hands and started. "The marriage took place in the parlor," Mrs. Tascher wrote, "and the household were invited to be present. I, however, had a bad headache and could not get down stairs; Bruce pleaded 'business;' and poor Hugh, whose boyish affections have been cruelly tampered with, had a fishing engagement. So there was nobody but Aunt Ruby and her 'help' to witness the touching ceremony except the minister and his wife. It _was_ touching, I suppose: Miss Custer wept bitterly at being so 'neglected,' and Ebling is mortally offended with Bruce." Three years went by; which space of time Mrs. Tascher spent chiefly in Florida and New York, going back and forth as the seasons changed in obedience to medical authority. At last she concluded to try a few weeks in Westbrook again. Aunt Ruby, who still kept boarders--all strangers, however--gave her the old rooms up stairs with their pleasant windows. Here she sat and wrote to Ruth a few days after her arrival.