However this might be, he would come back. She knew he would. Oh yes, she knew quite well he would come back. For four days she had asked God, and He had answered her at last. "’Help me, O God, for Christ’s sake!’ I said. ’Will my dear son come back to me? Shall I see him again? O God, give me a sign.’ And He did, my dear. Yes, it was just before dawn this morning. ’Janet!’ said a voice, and I was not afraid. ’Be patient, Janet! All will be well!’" Helena dared not look up, being afraid to penetrate by so much as a glance the sanctity of the old lady’s soul. "So you see it’s wrong to repine, dear. Everything will work out for the best. You are going to England, but that doesn’t matter in the least. We’ll all come together again yet. And when my dear ones are united, my sweet daughter and my boy, my brave, brave boy——" The old lady’s voice was quivering with the excitement of her joy, when Fatimah, who had stood aside in silence, stepped forward and said— "Better go home now, my lady. His lordship will be waiting for his lunch." Lady Nuneham took Helena’s head between her hands and kissed her on the forehead, then dropped her veil and rose to her feet by help of Fatimah’s arm on the one side and her stick on the other. "Good-bye for the present, Helena! Be sure you write as soon as you get to England. Take good care of yourself on the voyage, dear. And don’t forget to put on some nice warm underclothing, you know. Good-bye!" Helena saw her to the door, the sweet, helpless old child, living by the life of her beautiful love. As she passed down the path she waved her delicate hand in its silken mitten, and Helena said farewell to her with her eyes, knowing she would see her no more. *CHAPTER XII* After a while Helena began to think tenderly of Gordon, and to conjure up the beautiful moments of their love—the moment in the arbour before he set off for Alexandria, the moment in his quarters when she had to slip off her glove and dip her finger in the glass from which he drank her health, and above all, the moment of their first meeting, when he said he loved Egypt and the Egyptians, and everything and everybody, and they laughed and looked into each other’s eyes, and smiled without speaking, and he took her hand and kept on holding it, and a world of warm impulses coursed through her veins, and something whispered to her, "It is he!" But thinking like this about Gordon only made her remember with even more bitterness than before the man who had taken him away from her. Presently she saw that there was a kind of dishonour to Gordon in hating the Egyptian for that, and though she tried to justify herself by thinking of Gordon’s mother, and of the beautiful blind faith that was doomed to death, she was compelled to go back at length to the one sure ground on which she could continue to hate Ishmael and keep a good conscience—that the man had killed her father.