But he rallied rapidly, though Maude's heart beat painfully when occasionally a ray of sunshine stole into the room through the picturesque lattice-wood windows (which in Cairo had not been superseded by glass) and rested on his face, and she saw how pale and wan, if peaceful and bright, the latter was now: and then if he spoke too much, she placed her white hands on his lips, or silenced them more sweetly but quite as effectually. Hester, when she first saw Jack Elliot, little imagined that he would recover so rapidly. She had thought of Maude and then of her own father. 'Strange it is,' pondered the girl, 'that when one sorrow comes upon us--a shock unexpectedly--we seem to see the gradual approach of another, and so realize its bitterness before it becomes an actual fact. Thus I felt, long before poor papa died, that I should be alone and penniless in the world.' 'Hester!' exclaimed Roland, softly but upbraidingly, as she said something of this kind to him. 'Well, Roland,' said Hester, 'no one seemed to care where I went or what became of me; all the world was indifferent to me; I had lost all interest and saw no beauty in it.' He had both her hands in his now, and was gazing into her white-lidded and long-lashed dark-blue eyes. Then, as eye met eye, each saw a strange but alluring expression in the other--the past, the present, and future all mingled and combined--an expression of a nature deep and indescribable. We do not mean to rehearse all that Roland said then. If no woman can without some emotion hear a tale of love, especially if told so powerfully as Roland was telling it then, we may well believe how Hester's heart responded; and he held her in his embrace, and kissed her again and again as a man only kisses the girl he loves, and, more than all, the one he hopes to make his wife. So everything is said to come in time to those who wait. They were together again--together at last--and the outer world and all other things thereof seemed to glide away from them, leaving only love and peace and rest behind--love and trust with the radiance of light! THE END. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.