re
all the time; I could close my eyes and be back at 'The Jail,' looking
over the rails at his upturned face and hearing his voice. What a
wonderful thing love is!"

"And yet so easy to understand," he said with a smile, as he caught her
to him again. There was silence for a while; then he said, "We'll be
married soon, Celia?"

She blushed and her eyes fell for a moment; then she raised them to his
and whispered,

"Yes."

"My father wants us to spend our honeymoon in South America; wants us to
go to my mother. You will go; you will not mind the long journey?"

She was silent for a moment; then, almost solemnly, but with an infinite
love in her eyes and her voice, she murmured,

"'Whither thou goest, I will go ... thy people shall be my people.'"

* * * * *

As Celia went to Miriam's room, can it be wondered that her step grew
slower and, notwithstanding her own happiness, that her heart waxed
heavy with sorrow for the wretched young wife? She found Miriam lying
back in her chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face almost
vacant of any expression; she seemed weighed down by the apathy
resulting from utter hopelessness, from a knowledge of some evil from
which she could not escape. She turned her eyes to Celia, and Celia's
heart was made to ache by the look of dumb suffering in them, that look
which the weak always wear when the world is going wrong with them.

Celia knelt down beside the chair, and took one of the nerveless hands.

"Are you better, getting stronger, Lady Heyton?" she asked, gently.

Miriam shook her head listlessly, and gazed out of the window; then she
turned her eyes again slowly to Celia, and said, in a toneless voice,

"Is it true, what the servants are saying, that the Marquess's elder
brother has been discovered, and that the Marquess, our Marquess, is no
longer the master here? Marie came and told me something about it; but
she was confused and rambled, and I could make very little of it."

"It is true," said Celia. "The elder brother is alive, is here in the
house. He had been living in seclusion for years; the Marquess
discovered a little while ago that his brother was alive; but the real
Marquess did not wish to displace his younger brother. He was living in
poverty, working for his living. I knew him at that time."

Miriam looked only slightly interested. "You knew him? That's strange."

"Yes; it is all very strange," Celia agreed. "