"We have arranged otherwise," said Erena, with a mock assumption of authority. "One day will not make much difference. I am going to the camp for an hour, so I will leave you to the care of Miss Tollemache." Here she smiled playfully at Hypatia, who had just entered the room. "I dare say you are anxious to have a talk together." "How trusting and unsuspicious she is!" thought Hypatia. "Having once received his troth, she is absolutely sure of his fidelity. She has a noble nature, and, from me at least, she need not fear any disloyalty." Mrs. Summers had already left the room. Then the man and the maiden who had last met under such widely different circumstances in another land, were once more free to have speech, undisturbed by the presence of onlookers. But for this forest nymph, so sweet, so strong, so impossible to condemn, how differently even yet might their romance have ended! But the knight was in the toils of the Queen of Faerye, and to Elfland he must fare, under pain of death, or transformation to a being that even _she_ could not recognize. A creature false to his plighted troth, ungrateful to the girl who had saved his life at the risk of her own, whose love he had won. A love not transient and fleeting, like so many affected by the women of his race, founded upon vanity, ambition, greed of wealth or rank, but changeless, immortal, strong as death, true to the grave, even to the dark realm beyond it. Hypatia had probed and purified her heart, and she felt, though she loved him now with a force and passionate feeling hitherto unsuspected, that she could not for worlds have accepted his hand, even had he offered it. They were now two different people. She, after trial, change, and the bitterness of lost illusions, had vowed herself to the life-devotion which succeeds the sanguine expectation of mighty work among the heathen. He, the haggard, war-worn soldier, sick unto death and sore wounded--ah! so unlike the trim sportsman and correctly attired country gentleman of the old half-forgotten life. He was the first to speak. She gazed on him with the pitying tenderness of womanhood shining through her troubled eyes. "A strange meeting, Miss Tollemache, in a strange land!" he said, with a brave attempt to smile. "Rather a change from Hereford here! Who would have thought of seeing _you_ here, of all people?" She made haste to reply, lest the unshed tears should resist all efforts to control them. She would have thrown herself on her knees by the side of his couch and clasped his wasted hand, had she dared to give vent to her feelings. Then she spoke lightly, though her mouth quivered with the effort. "Isn't it hard to say where you may fall in with any given man, or woman either, if it comes to that, in these exciting days?" "Certainly you are the last person I ever expected to see here," he made answer, half musingly. "In New Zealand of all places, and at this particular mission station!"