"don't you hear the gentleman
thanking you?"

She started, as one awaking out of a dream, and looked into his face,
blushing scarlet.

"Good heavens, what a beautiful creature!" said Tom to himself, as
quite a new emotion passed through him. Quite new it was, whatsoever
it was; and he was aware of it. He had had his passions, his
intrigues, in past years, and prided himself--few men more--on
understanding women; but the expression of the face, and the strange
words with which she had greeted him, added to the broad fact of
her having offered her own life for his, raised in him a feeling of
chivalrous awe and admiration, which no other woman had ever called
up.

"Madam," he said again; "I can repay you with nothing but thanks: but,
to judge from your conduct last night, you are one of those people
who will find reward enough in knowing that you have done a noble and
heroic action."

She looked at him very steadfastly, blushing still. Thurnall, be it
understood, was (at least, while his face was in the state in which
Heaven intended it to be, half hidden in a silky-brown beard) a very
good-looking fellow; and (to use Mark Armsworth's description) "as
hard as a nail; as fresh as a rose; and stood on his legs like a
game-cock." Moreover, as Willis said approvingly, he had spoken to her
"as if he was a duke, and she was a duchess." Besides, by some blessed
moral law, the surest way to make oneself love any human being is to
go and do him a kindness; and therefore Grace had already a tender
interest in Tom, not because he had saved her, but she him. And so it
was, that a strange new emotion passed through her heart also, though
so little understood by her, that she put it forthwith into words.

"You might repay me," she said in a sad and tender tone.

"You have only to command me," said Tom, wincing a little as the words
passed his lips.

"Then turn to God, now in the day of His mercies. Unless you have
turned to Him already."

One glance at Tom's rising eyebrows told her what he thought upon
those matters.

She looked at him sadly, lingeringly, as if conscious that she ought
not to look too long, and yet unable to withdraw her eyes.--"Ah! and
such a precious soul as yours must be; a precious soul--all taken, and
you alone left! God must have high things in store for you. He must
have a great work for you to do. Else, why are you not as one of
these! Oh, think! where would you have been at this moment if God had