“You have my best wishes,” said Hilary, holding out her hand with tears in her eyes. He thanked her warmly. “James behaved very ill,” said he, presently; “though I hope to be the gainer, I can not excuse him. He was very, very wrong, one way or other. He was either too much or too little in earnest. Young as she was, she was not such a child as to excuse his devotion or his fickleness――and it has hurt his character too.” “Please don’t. I would rather not talk of it now,” said Hilary, gently. “I beg your pardon; do you know we are almost at the terminus?” “Yes;” she was looking very white, and seemed incapable of saying more. In a minute the train stopped――in a very few more the two were in a fly, and driving hastily toward Southsea. She could not speak, she could hardly breathe, as she saw walls and houses fly past them; her heart seemed struggling to rush on faster, faster to that unknown spot in which her husband waited for her. They reached the house, they stopped, the door opened, Maurice appeared; Hilary had hardly time to see his expression, as he hurried to lift her from the carriage and support her inside the house. He held her in his arms, her face was hidden on his shoulder, as she whispered, between gasping sobs: “Where is he?” He gently opened the door, and disengaging herself, she sprang in. “Hilary, my darling!” said Captain Hepburn; and in another moment she was on her knees, beside his couch, and her tears of joy and grief, of anxiety and gratitude, and love, were poured out in her husband’s bosom. CHAPTER XXIV. “I’m wearing awa’, Jean, Like snow when it’s thaw, Jean, I’m wearing awa’ to the land of the leal. “There’s no sorrow there, Jean, There’s neither cold nor care, Jean, But days are all fair in the land of the leal. ―――――― “Then dry that tearful e’e, Jean, My soul langs to be free, Jean, And angels beckon me to the land of the leal. “Then fare thee well, my ain Jean, This world’s care is vain, Jean, We’ll meet, and ay be fain, in the land of the leal.” The feelings which may be clothed in words of earth, and the love which can be depicted by mortal language, must be shallow, light, and transient at the best. Those to whom love is but a creature of the imagination, and sorrow a pleasant fiction, may delight in dressing their fancies in eloquent phrases, and in dwelling on scenes of ideal distress. But the heart which has felt the deep-stirrings of true, holy, devoted affection, and known all the sad and stern realities of grief, which ever in this world must flow from feeling, shrinks from portraying it as from sacrilege; and while it feels how vain and unreal are the most eloquent descriptions, yet holds it a profanation to lay such feelings bare to the public gaze. It was not the cry of the _true_ mother in her grief, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it!”