journey, though it was interesting and
delightful, as about her arrival and the meeting with her dear friends,
whose loved faces were so sweetly familiar in that strange, strange land
that she fell upon their necks and wept. She drew vivid pictures of the
magnificent scenery that lay around her in her new home--the gardens,
the orange-groves, the figs and olives, the terraced slope of Mount
Lebanon, the glorious Mediterranean.

Mrs. Tascher was comforted, though the void made by Ruth's absence was
almost like death, the wide space seemed so unspannable. She wrote back
at once in all the fulness of her heart, and Ruth was not so absorbed in
grief for the loss of her lover but that she appreciated and was deeply
grateful for the tender, unfailing affection of her friend. Mrs.
Tascher, who felt that the sharpest knife was the best to be used in a
case of urgent surgical necessity, wrote briefly that the doctor and
Miss Custer were married--that Miss Custer had begged for at least three
months' preparation, but the doctor was impatient; and so, as soon as
she was able to stand the journey to Boston, where her friends and
property were, they had joined hands and started.

"The marriage took place in the parlor," Mrs. Tascher wrote, "and the
household were invited to be present. I, however, had a bad headache and
could not get down stairs; Bruce pleaded 'business;' and poor Hugh,
whose boyish affections have been cruelly tampered with, had a fishing
engagement. So there was nobody but Aunt Ruby and her 'help' to witness
the touching ceremony except the minister and his wife. It _was_
touching, I suppose: Miss Custer wept bitterly at being so 'neglected,'
and Ebling is mortally offended with Bruce."

Three years went by; which space of time Mrs. Tascher spent chiefly in
Florida and New York, going back and forth as the seasons changed in
obedience to medical authority. At last she concluded to try a few weeks
in Westbrook again. Aunt Ruby, who still kept boarders--all strangers,
however--gave her the old rooms up stairs with their pleasant windows.
Here she sat and wrote to Ruth a few days after her arrival.

Ruth had become quite contented, and even happy, under the warm Syrian
sun, watching with earnest, loving eyes the development of barbarism and
heathenism into civilization and Christianity, though it seemed very
much to her sometimes as if she had lost her place and personality in
the world. She was swallowed up in t