“That may be true enough; but the thought came, and ‘life is but thought,’ you know; the thing might not follow. However, we are all quite happy all the same.” He looked at her, still shaking his head. “I suppose so,” he said; “I suppose so; quite happy! but not as we meant to be; that was what you were thinking.” “I did not go so far. I was not thinking at all. I _think_ that I think very seldom. It only caught me as the old thought used to do, and brought so many things back.” She smiled, but he sighed. “Yes, everything is very different. Yourself--to see you here, offering up your life for others--making a sacrifice----” “I have made no sacrifice,” she said, somewhat proudly, then laughed. “Is that because I am unmarried, Mr. Pen? You wedded people, you are so sure of being better off than we are. You are too complacent. But _I_ am not so sure of that.” He did not join in her laugh, but looked at her with melting eyes--eyes in which there was some suspicion of tears. It was perhaps a trifle unkind of her to call him complacent in his conjugality. There were a hundred unspeakable things in his look--pity, reverence, devotion, not the old love perhaps, but something higher; something that was never to end. “On the whole, we are taking it too seriously,” she said, after a pause. “It is over now, and the sun is going down. And you came to talk to me?--perhaps of something in the parish that wants looking to?” “No--I came in only to look at you, and make sure that you were well. The children you were visiting the other day have the scarlet fever; and besides, I have had a feeling in my mind about you--a presentiment. I should not have been surprised to hear that there had been--letters--or some kind of advances made----” “From whom?” “Well,” he said, after a slight pause; “they are both brothers--both sons--but they are not the same to me, Miss Mary. From John; he has been so much in my mind these two or three days, I have got to dreaming about him. Yes, yes, I know that is not worth thinking of; but we were always in such sympathy, he and I. Don’t you believe in some communication between minds that were closely allied? I do. It is a superstition if you like. Nothing could happen to any of you but, if I were at ever so great a distance, I should know.” “Don’t be too sure of that, Mr. Pen. Sometimes the dearest to us perish, and we know nothing of it; but I prefer your view. You dreamt of poor John? What did you see? Alas! dreams are the only ways of divining anything about him now!” “And your father is as determined as ever?” “We never speak on the subject. It has disappeared like so many other things. Why continue a fruitless discussion which only embittered him and wore me out? If any critical moment should come, if--one must say it plainly--my father should be like to die--then I should speak, you need not fear.” “I never feared that you would do everything the best sister, the bravest friend, could do.”