The conviction that he was alive grew upon her as she sat there in the darkening room. She drew out the glove and pressed it to her lips. To all intents and purposes she was still a widow, and as such she must remain for the present. As she cherished the glove and hid it, so she must keep her discovery a secret. She must also guard against showing the new hope that had sprung up; the hope that he would return, that sooner or later he would seek her out and bid her come. Could he do it openly? She doubted the wisdom of such a course. She remembered how they had failed in their first attempt to escape. There must be no failure the second time. She must be careful and cautious and trust to no one. The more she contemplated the step she might be called upon to take at any moment, the more clearly she understood its seriousness. The effect would be far-reaching and irretrievable. To throw in her lot with her husband would mean that she would cut herself adrift from the family for ever. She must be one with him, of his faith, and dead to all her relatives. Was she prepared to make the sacrifice? Yes, a thousand times, yes! The old spirit that had led her remote ancestresses to the funeral pile to die in the flames that devoured their dead husbands' bodies, rose strongly within her and bound her to her living husband. For his sake she would endure and bear as he had endured and borne. She would be ready when his summons came; and she would go gladly, even though he beckoned to her from the fire of adversity, that burned as fiercely as the flames of the old suttee funeral pile; she would join him and cling to him for ever! She lifted her head with eyes that shone, not with tears but with a new light. The last vestige of the child died within her; and the woman who walked thoughtfully back to the zenana, as the shadow of night settled over the landscape, was a woman of determination and strength of purpose. The baptism of sorrow had lifted her on to a higher plane, and had fitted her for better things than a colourless life of inert misery. CHAPTER XXIV Alderbury had been travelling over his district. As superintending missionary his presence was urgently needed in half a dozen places at once as a rule, not to teach his converts hymns, but to govern their temporal business and to guide their spiritual affairs, to encourage the faint-hearted and to shake the pastoral staff, metaphorically speaking, in the faces of those who showed signs of the old Adam. They received his ministrations with admirable meekness and adored him all the more for his reproof or praise. He loved his people in return, but that fact did not blind him to their weaknesses.