quiries so minute, and reported them in his memoir with so
faithful a care, should not have discovered that a youth, attended by
the same woman who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the town
on the same night as Grayle himself disappeared? But Derval had related
truthfully, according to Margrave's account, the flight of Ayesha and
her Indian servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not even to the
existence of the boy, who must have been of no mean importance in the
suite of Louis Grayle, if he were, indeed, the son whom Grayle had made
his constant companion, and constituted his principal heir. Not many
minutes did I give myself up to the cloud of reflections through which
no sunbeam of light forced its way. One thought overmastered all;
Margrave had threatened death to my Lilian, and warned me of what I
should learn from the lips of Faber, "the sage of the college." I stood,
shuddering, at the door of my home; I did not dare to enter.

"Allen," said a voice, in which my ear detected the unwonted tremulous
faltering, "be firm,--be calm. I keep my promise. The hour is come in
which you may again see the Lilian of old, mind to mind, soul to soul."

Faber's hand took mine, and led me into the house.

"You do, then, fear that this interview will be too much for her
strength?" said I, whisperingly.

"I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and I dare not refuse it."

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

I left Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door of Lilian's room. The
door opened suddenly, noiselessly, and her mother came out with one hand
before her face, and the other locked in Amy's, who was leading her as a
child leads the blind. Mrs. Ashleigh looked up, as I touched her, with
a vacant, dreary stare. She was not weeping, as was her womanly wont in
every pettier grief, but Amy was. No word was exchanged between us. I
entered, and closed the door; my eyes turned mechanically to the corner
in which was placed the small virgin bed, with its curtains white as a
shroud. Lilian was not there. I looked around, and saw her half reclined
on a couch near the window. She was dressed, and with care. Was not that
her bridal robe?

"Allen! Allen!" she murmured. "Again, again my Allen--again, again your
Lilian!" And, striving in vain to rise, she stretched out her arms in
the yearning of reunited love. And as I knelt beside her, those arms
closed round me for the first time in the frank, chaste, holy tenderness
of a wife's