Would it seem such a wonder to him? Well, let it seem a miracle to him so long as it gave him pleasure. If she had been overwhelmed with happiness at the miracle of his restoration to her, why should he not be overjoyed at the miracle of her restoration to him? She sat for a long time at the open window, thinking her thoughts, while before her eyes the soft velvety darkness of the exquisite July night slipped over the garden. The delicate dew scents filled the air, and the perfume of the roses mingled with that of the jessamine which dropped from the trellis-work of the verandah. The drone of a winged beetle rising and falling in musical monotone, like the sound of a distant bell borne by a fitful breeze, came to her ears. A bat whirled past the opening of the window, and the cat that was playing after the moths on the lawn, struck out at it for a moment. And then a servant brought lamps into the room. She started from her reverie, and became aware in an instant of the details of the scene before her. It was such a scene as had been before her many times during her life. How often had she not sat there in the early night, wondering if the man whom she loved would ever sit by her side again in the long twilight of a summer's day in England--at home--at home. And now she thought of him lying alone among the strange trees--the mighty broad-leaved palms, the enormous ropes of the trailing plants falling around him. Was he thinking of the English home which he had forsaken, but which was waiting for him? How often had not he found comfort in the midst of his desolation through picturing the garden at The Knoll, as he had walked in it on those summer nights long ago? Alas! alas! With his thoughts of the old garden and the old times there must have come that terrible thought which he had hinted at in his letter--the thought that she had been unfaithful to him. Ah, how could he ever have had such a thought? She had heard of fickle women--loving a man passionately one day, and the next carried away by the glamour of a new face and a changed voice--but how could he fancy for a moment that she was such a woman? Thus she sat, with her thoughts and her memories and her anticipations, until the full moon had arisen behind the trees of Westwood Court and was flooding the sky with light and sending the great shadows of the elm far over the lawn. When the sound of the striking of the church clock roused her from her reverie, she was conscious of one thought: that the pang that must have been his when he wrote that postscript would soon pass away in the joy of knowing that she had been true to him. But it was a long time before she went to sleep that night. CHAPTER XII.