her strong feeling lent animation
to her features. The other was a young man about half her years, and as
unlike her as he well could be. His long flaxen hair waved over a brow
as white as hers was dark, and his eyes were a light clear blue. He sat
on a stool in front of the fire, gazing into the charred wooden embers
with intent fixed eyes. The woman had glanced at him several times, but
neither had spoken for above half an hour. Now she broke the silence.

"Well, Ralph?"

"Well, Mother?" echoed the youth with a smile. Both spoke in German--a
language then as unfamiliar in England as Persian.

"What are you thinking about so intently?"

"Life," was the ready but unexpected answer.

"Past, present, future?"

"Past and future--hardly present. The past chiefly--the long ago."

The woman moved uneasily, but did not answer.

"Mother, if I am of age to-day, I think I have the right to ask you a
few questions. Do you accord it?"

"Ah!" she said, with a deep intonation. "I knew it would come some
time. Well! what is to be must be. Speak, my son."

The young man laid his hand affectionately on hers.

"Had it not better come?" he said. "You would not prefer that I asked
my questions of others than yourself, nor that I shut them in my own
soul, and fretted my heart out, trying to find the answer."

"I should prefer any suffering rather than the loss of thy love and
confidence, my Ralph," she answered tenderly. "To the young, it is easy
to look back, for they have only just left the flowery garden. To the
old, it may be so, when there is only a little way to go, and they will
then be gathered to their fathers. But half-way through the long
journey--with all the graves behind, and the dreary stretch of trackless
heath before--Speak thy will, Ralph."

"Forgive me if I pain you, Mother. I feel as if I must speak, and
something has happened to-day which bids me do it now."

It was evident that these words startled and discomposed the mother.
She had been leaning back rather wearily in the corner of the bench, as
one resting from bodily strain. Now she sat up, the rich crimson
mantling her dark cheek.

"What! Hast thou seen--hast thou heard something?"

"I have seen," answered Ralph slowly, as if almost unwilling to say it,
"a face from the long ago. At any rate, a face which carried my memory
thither."

"Whose?" she said, almost in tones of alarm.

"I cannot tell you. Let me make it as plain a