Perhaps Faith hardly heard the question, for she did not acknowledge it by so much as a smile. She wished to ask the further question, whether the assurance of last night was still true; but his appearance had driven such fear to her heart that she dared not ask it. She stood quite still a minute, but when she spoke her words were in the utmost clear sweetness of a woman's voice. "Can I do something for you, Mr. Linden?" "You are doing something for me now--it is so pleasant to see you. But Miss Faith, I shall have to reclaim some of your scholars; you have been teaching too much to-day." "No--" she said,--"I have had no chance." "No chance to teach too much? And why?" "Why," she said--"I had only the usual hour this morning. I could do no more." "You look as if you had been teaching all day--or taught, which is but another branch. What did my boys say to you?" "I think they thought they were saying to you, Mr. Linden,--they behaved so well." He smiled. "I don't believe even your conjuring powers could bring about such a hallucination, Miss Faith.--What a day it has been! Look at that sunlight and think of the city that hath 'no need of the sun'!" She looked where he bade her, but the contrast was a little too strong just then with the earth that had so much 'need' of it! Only the extreme gravity of her face however indicated anything of the struggle going on. Her eye did not move,--nor eyelid. "_That_ is the only rest we must wait 'for,'" Mr. Linden said. "That 'remaineth.'" Faith answered nothing. But after a little while the shadow of that sunlight passed away from her face, and she turned to the couch again and asked with her former gentle expression, "Will you have tea up here, Mr. Linden?" "I'm afraid I must," he said, looking up at her with eyes that rather questioned than answered. "Does mother know what you would like to have?" "Miss Faith--I wish you would tell me just what is troubling you." The question flushed her a little, and for a moment her face was a quick play of light and shade; then she said, "It troubled me not to see you looking better." He took the force of her words, though he answered lightly. "I suppose I do look rather frightful! But Miss Faith, I hope to get over that in a few days--you must try and brace up your nerves, because if you cannot bear the sight of me I shall have to deny myself the sight of you." "Don't do that," she said, the light coming into her eye and voice as if by an actual sunbeam. "Then it is true, what you wrote me last night, Mr. Linden?" "Well!" he said--"I am not much in the habit of maintaining my own words,--however, in this case I am willing to admit them true. If it will be any relief to your mind, Miss Faith, I will promise to remain in seclusion until you say I am fit to be seen down stairs."