Mrs. Little,
Jael began to recover resignation; but this could not be without an
occasional paroxysm of grief.

These she managed to hide from Mrs. Little.

But one day that lady surprised her crying. She stood and looked at
her a moment, then sat down quietly beside her and took her hand. Jael
started, and feared discovery.

"My child," said Mrs. Little, "if you have lost a father, you have
gained a mother; and then, as to your sister, why my Henry is gone to
the very same country; yet, you see, I do not give way to sorrow. As
soon as he writes, I will beg him to make inquiries for Patty, and send
them home if they are not doing well." Then Mrs. Little kissed Jael,
and coaxed her and rocked with her, and Jael's tears began to flow, no
longer for her own great grief, but for this mother, who was innocently
consoling her, unconscious of the blow that must one day fall upon
herself.

So matters went on pretty smoothly; only one morning, speaking of Henry,
Mrs. Little surprised a look of secret intelligence between her brother
and Jael Dence. She made no remark at the time, but she puzzled in
secret over it, and began at last to watch the pair.

She asked Raby at dinner, one day, when she might hope to hear from
Henry.

"I don't know," said he, and looked at Jael Dence like a person watching
for orders.

Mrs. Little observed this, and turned keenly round to Jael.

"Oh," said Jael, "the doctor--I beg pardon, Dr. Amboyne--can tell you
that better than I can. It is a long way to Australia."

"How you send me from one to another," said Mrs. Little, speaking very
slowly.

They made no reply to that, and Mrs. Little said no more. But she
pondered all this. She wrote to Dr. Amboyne, and asked him why no letter
had come from Henry.

Dr. Amboyne wrote back that, even if he had gone in a steamboat,
there was hardly time for a letter to come back: but he had gone in a
sailing-vessel. "Give him three months and a half to get there, and two
months for his letters to come back."

In this same letter he told her he was glad to hear she was renewing her
youth like an eagle, but reminded her it would entail some consequences
more agreeable to him than to her.

She laid down the letter with a blush and fell into a reverie.

Dr. Amboyne followed up this letter with a visit or two, and urged her
to keep her promise and marry him.

She had no excuse for declining, but she procrastinated: she did not
like to marry without c