whom she had literally dragged from the grasp of death, while, after the
first loving words, Mark Heath gazed at Richmond in a troubled way, and
proceeded to tell of his adventures.

"But did you really bring back a bag of diamonds, Mark, or is it--"

"Fancy," he said bitterly. "No; it is no fancy. I have been delirious,
Jenny; but I am sane enough now. I had the bag of diamonds, and over a
hundred pounds in gold, in a belt about my waist. Rich, darling, I was
silent during these past two years; for I vowed that I would not write
again till I could come back to you and say I have fulfilled my promise,
and now I have come to you a beggar."

"Yes," said Richmond, laying her hand in his, as an ineffably sweet look
of content beamed from her eyes in his, and there was tender yearning
love in every tone of her sweet deep voice; "but you have come back
alive after we had long mourned you as dead."

"Better that I had been," he said bitterly. "Better that that dark
night's work had been completed than I should have come back a beggar."

Janet and Richmond exchanged glances; which with a sick man's suspicion
he noted, and his brow contracted.

"They doubt me," he thought.

"But you have come back, Mark. We are young; and there is our life
before us. I do not complain," said Richmond gently. "We must wait."

"Wait!" he said bitterly; and he uttered a low groan, which made the
nurse approach. "No, no," he said, "I will be quite calm." The nurse
drew back.

"Tell me, Mark," said Janet, with her pretty little earnest face
puckered up. "Why did you not come straight to me? How stupid? Of
course you didn't know where, as you did not get my last letters?"

"No, I have had no letters for a year. How could I, out in that
desert?"

"But, Mark, you recollect being pursued by those men!"

"Yes, yes."

"You are sure it was not a dream?"

He looked at her almost fiercely.

"Dream? Could a man dream a thing like that?"

"Don't be cross with me, dear Mark," she said, laying her cheek against
his. "It seems so strange, and you have been very, very ill. My own
darling brother!"

It was not jealousy, but something very near akin, that troubled Rich as
she stood there, with an intense longing to take her friend's place,
after the long parting. But there was the recollection that their
parting had not been the warm passionate embracing of lovers, only calm
and full of the hope of what might be.

Janet conti