"I am glad, glad!" Celia murmured, giving him a little hug. "Yes; he is
a wonderful young man; I saw that the first time I met him." She told
him of that meeting in the British Museum Reading Room. "Oh, I can quite
understand, now I come to think of it; with all her seeming coldness,
Susie has a tender heart. I've found that out----"
"By the surest way, the revelation of your own," said Derrick. He looked
round the room, as if everything in it were precious to him. "And this
is where you have worked," he said.
"Yes," she nodded, also looking round; "and I have been very happy
here--or should have been," she went on softly, her eyes on his, "if I
had been able to keep a certain man out of my thoughts. But he was there
all the time; I could close my eyes and be back at 'The Jail,' looking
over the rails at his upturned face and hearing his voice. What a
wonderful thing love is!"
"And yet so easy to understand," he said with a smile, as he caught her
to him again. There was silence for a while; then he said, "We'll be
married soon, Celia?"
She blushed and her eyes fell for a moment; then she raised them to his
and whispered, "Yes."
"My father wants us to spend our honeymoon in South America; wants us to
go to my mother. You will go; you will not mind the long journey?"
She was silent for a moment; then, almost solemnly, but with an infinite
love in her eyes and her voice, she murmured, "'Whither thou goest, I will go ... thy people shall be my people.'"
* * * * * As Celia went to Miriam's room, can it be wondered that her step grew
slower and, notwithstanding her own happiness, that her heart waxed
heavy with sorrow for the wretched young wife? She found Miriam lying
back in her chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face almost
vacant of any expression; she seemed weighed down by the apathy
resulting from utter hopelessness, from a knowledge of some evil from
which she could not escape. She turned her eyes to Celia, and Celia's
heart was made to ache by the look of dumb suffering in them, that look
which the weak always wear when the world is going wrong with them.
Celia knelt down beside the chair, and took one of the nerveless hands.