t, washed,
went to and fro as Jane bade her; submitted to all her grumblings and
tossings; and then came at the old man's bidding to read to him every
evening, her hand in his; her voice cheerful, her face full of quiet
light. But her hair was becoming streaked with gray. Her face, howsoever
gentle, was sharpened, as if with continual pain. No wonder; for she had
worn that belt next her heart for now two years and more, till it had
almost eaten into the heart above which it lay. It gave her perpetual
pain: and yet that pain was a perpetual joy--a perpetual remembrance of
him, and of that walk with him from Tolchard's farm.

Mary loved her--wanted to treat her as an equal--to call her sister: but
Grace drew back lovingly, but humbly, from all advances; for she had
divined Mary's secret with the quick eye of woman; she saw how Mary grew
daily paler, thinner, sadder, and knew for whom she mourned. Be it so;
Mary had a right to him, and she had none.

* * * * *

And where was Tom Thurnall all the while?

No man could tell.

Mark inquired; Lord Minchampstead inquired; great personages who had
need of him at home and abroad inquired: but all in vain.

A few knew, and told Lord Minchampstead, who told Mark, in confidence,
that he had been heard of last in the Circassian mountains, about
Christmas, 1854: but since then all was blank. He had vanished into the
infinite unknown.

Mark swore that he would come home some day: but two full years were
past, and Tom came not.

The old man never seemed to regret him; never mentioned his name after a
while.

"Mark," he said once, "remember David. Why weep for the child? I shall
go to him, but he will not come to me."

None knew, meanwhile, why the old man needed not to talk of Tom to his
friends and neighbours; it was because he and Grace never talked of
anything else.

* * * * *

So they had lived, and so they had waited, till that week before last
Christmas-day, when Mellot and Stangrave made their appearance in
Whitbury, and became Mark Armsworth's guests.

The week slipped on. Stangrave hunted on alternate days; and on the
others went with Claude, who photographed (when there was sun to do it
with) Stangrave End, and Whitford Priory, interiors and exteriors; not
forgetting the Stangrave monuments in Whitbury church; and sat, too, for
many a pleasant hour with the good Doctor, who took to him at once, as
a