"My darling, you are ill," he said, in a voice of agonised anxiety. "I am afraid you are very ill. Do sit down quietly on the couch, and let me ring. I must speak to the O'Mara woman, or somebody. Why didn't the fools let me know? Have you been ill all these weeks?" Myra let him place her on the couch; smiling up at him reassuringly, as he stood before her. "You must not ring the bell, Jim," she said. "Maggie is at the Lodge; and Groatley would be so astonished. I am quite well." He looked around, in man-like helplessness; yet feeling something must be done. A long ivory fan, of exquisite workmanship, lay on a table near. He caught it up, and handed it to her. She took it; and to please him, opened it, fanning herself gently as she talked. "I am not ill, Jim; really dear, I am not. I am only strangely happy and thankful. It seems too wonderful for our poor earthly hearts to understand. And I am a little frightened about the future--but you will help me to face that, I know. And I am rather worried about little things I have done wrong. It seems foolish--but as soon as I realised Michael was coming home, I became conscious of hosts of sins of omission, and I scarcely know where to begin to set them right. And the worst of all is--Jim! we have lost little Peter's grave! No one seems able to locate it. It is so trying of the gardeners; and so wrong of me; because of course I ought to have planted it with flowers. And Michael would have expected a little marble slab, by now. But I, stupidly, was too ill to see to the funeral; and now Anson declares they put him in the plantation, and George swears it was in the shrubbery. I have been consulting Groatley who always has ideas, and expresses them so well, and he says: 'Choose a suitable spot, m' lady; order a handsome tomb; plant it with choice flowers; and who's to be the wiser, till the resurrection?' Groatley is always resourceful; but of course I never deceive Michael. Fancy little Peter rising from the shrubbery, when Michael had mourned for years over a marble tomb on the lawn! But it really is a great worry. They must all begin digging, and keep on until they find something definite. It will be good for the shrubbery and the plantation, like the silly old man in the parable--no, I mean fable--who pretended he had hidden a treasure. Oh, Jim, don't look so distressed. I ought not to pour out all these trivial things to you; but since I have known Michael is coming back, my mind seems to have become foolish and trivial again. Michael always has that effect upon me; because--though he himself is so great and clever--he really thinks trivial and unimportant things are a woman's vocation in life. But oh, Jim--Jim Airth--with _you_ I am always lifted straight to the big things; and our big thing to-day is this:--that you never killed Michael. Do you remember telling me how, as you lay in your tent recovering from the fever, if some one could have