nd more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which
touched a sensitive corner of her nature.

"Why should I be marrying?" she asked presently. "There was my sister's
son all those years. I had to care for him."

"Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!" he rejoined.

"Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year. Since
then he is older than me by fifty. I had not thought of marriage before
he went away. Squire's son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me!
He needed me. They came, did they? Well, and if they came?"

"And since the Egyptian went?"

A sort of sob came into her throat. "He does not need me, but he may--he
will one day; and then I shall be ready. But now--"

Old Soolsby's face turned away. His house overlooked every house in
the valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even
recognise many in the far streets. Besides, there hung along two nails
on the wall a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main. The
grounds of the Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the
Red Mansion were ever within his vision. Once, twice, thrice, he had
seen what he had seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been
roused in him.

"He will need us both--the Egyptian will need us both one day," he
answered now; "you more than any, me because I can help him, too--ay,
I can help him. But married or single you could help him; so why waste
your days here?"

"Is it wasting my days to stay with my father? He is lonely, most lonely
since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that
life yonder. His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when
Davy was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the
rebel tribes. He frightened me then, he was so stern and still. Ah, but
that day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!" she
added, smiling. "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied
to him and to our Egyptian?"

No one looking at her limpid, shining blue eyes but would have set
her down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on
her smooth face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the
lissomeness of a girl of fifteen. There was in her eyes, however, an
unquiet sadness; she had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed
on some vexing problem. Such a mood suddenly came upon her now. The
pen lay by the paper untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long
silence fe