The serious face of the lawyer was more serious than ever: his long upper lip trembled a little. He turned round to the others with anxious self-restraint. "She is very frail," he said, "a delicate bit creature all her life--and since her accident--" He spoke of this, as his manner was, as if it had happened a week ago. Walter hurried away to the library, in which he found Miss Milnathort carefully arranged upon a sofa, wrapped up in white furs instead of her usual garments, a close white hood surrounding the delicate brightness of her face. She held out her hands to him at first without a word; and when she could speak, said, with a tremble in her voice: "I have come to see the end of it. I have come to see--her and you." "I should have come to you," cried Walter, "I did not forget--but for my mother's illness----" "Yes?" she said with a grateful look. "You thought upon me? Oh, but my heart has been with her and you! Oh, the terrible time it was! the first news in the papers, the fear that you were buried there under the ruins, you--and she; and then to wait a night and a day." "I should have sent you word at once--I might have known; but I did not think of the papers." "No, how should you? you were too busy with your own life. Oh, the thoughts of that night. I just lay and watched for you from the darkening to the dawning. No, scarcely what you could call praying--just waiting upon the Lord. I bade Him mind upon Walter and me--that had lost the battle. And I thought I saw you, you and your Oona. Was not I wise when I said it was a well-omened name?" She paused a little, weeping and smiling. "I could not tell you all the thoughts that went through my mind. I thought if it was even so, there might have been a worse fate. To break the spell and defeat the enemy even at the cost of your two bonnie lives--I thought it would not be an ill fate, the two of you together. Did I not say it? Two that made up one, the perfect man. That is God's ordinance, my dear? that is His ordinance. Two--not just for pleasure, or for each other, but for Him and everything that is good. You believed me when I said that. Oh, you believed me! and so it was not in vain that I was--killed yon time long ago----" Her voice was broken with sobs. She leant upon Walter's shoulder who had knelt down beside her, and wept there like a child--taking comfort like a child. "Generally," she began after a moment, "there is little account made, little, little account, of them that have gone before, that have been beaten, Walter. I can call you nothing but Walter to-day. And Oona, though she has won the battle, she is just me, but better. We lost. We had the same heart; but the time had not come for the victory. And now you, my young lord, you, young Erradeen, like him, you have won, Oona and you. We were beaten; but yet I have a share in it. How can you tell, a young man like you, how those that have been defeated, lift their