ess for the lonely man could have justified her in
thinking there was any resemblance.

She did not see him again for a week, and meantime she did not tell the
vice-consul of what had happened. But an anxiety for the minister began
to mingle with her anxieties for herself; she constantly wondered why
she did not hear from her lover, and she occasionally wondered whether
Mr. Orson were not falling into want again. She had decided to betray
his condition to the vice-consul, when he came, bringing the money she
had lent him. He had received a remittance from an unexpected source;
and he hoped she would excuse his delay in repaying her loan. She wished
not to take the money, at least till he was quite sure he should not
want it, but he insisted.

"I have enough to keep me, now, till I hear from other sources, with the
means for returning home. I see no object in continuing here, under the
circumstances."

In the relief which she felt for him Clementina's heart throbbed with a
pain which was all for herself. Why should she wait any longer either?
For that instant she abandoned the hope which had kept her up so long; a
wave of homesickness overwhelmed her.

"I should like to go back, too," she said. "I don't see why I'm
staying."

"Mr. Osson, why can't you let me"--she was going to say--"go home with
you?" But she really said what was also in her heart, "Why can't you let
me give you the money to go home? It is all Mrs. Landa's money, anyway."

"There is certainly that view of the matter," he assented with
a promptness that might have suggested a lurking grudge for the
vice-consul's decision that she ought to keep the money Mrs. Lander had
given her.

But Clementina urged unsuspiciously: "Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall feel
better if you take it. I only wish I could go home, too!"

The minister was silent while he was revolving, with whatever scruple
or reluctance, a compromise suitable to the occasion. Then he said, "Why
should we not return together?"

"Would you take me?" she entreated.

"That should be as you wished. I am not much acquainted with the usages
in such matters, but I presume that it would be entirely practicable. We
could ask the vice-consul."

"Yes--"

"He must have had considerable experience in cases of the kind. Would
your friends meet you in New York, or--"

"I don't know," said Clementina with a pang for the thought of a meeting
she had sometimes fancied there, when her lover had come out