He laid his hand over his eyes with a nervous shudder.
"But I am well now," he added; "I am only suffering from fatigue and excitement. Gabriella's letter found me leaning over the grave. It raised me, restored me, brought me back to life, to hope, to love, and home."
He told us, in the course of the evening, how he had found Mr. Harland on the eve of embarking for India, and that he offered to be his companion; and how he had written to his mother before his voyage, telling her of his destination, and entreating her to write if she were still willing to call him her son. The letter came not to relieve the agonies of suspense, and mine contained the first tidings he received from his native land. It found him, as he had said, on a sick-bed, and its contents imparted new life to his worn and tortured being. He immediately took passage in a home bound ship, though so weak he was obliged to be carried on board in a litter. Mr. Harland accompanied him to New York, where on debarking they had met Mr. Brahan, who had given him a brief sketch of my visit, and the events that marked it.
As I sat by him on a low seat, with his hand clasped in mine, while he told me in a low voice of the depth of his penitence, the agonies of his remorse, and the hope of God's pardon that had dawned on what he supposed the night clouds of death, I saw him start as if in sudden pain. The lace sleeve had fallen back from my left arm. His eyes were fixed on the wound he had inflicted. He bent his head forward, and pressed his lips on the scar.
"They shall look upon him whom they have pierced," he murmured. "O my Saviour I could thy murderers feel pangs of deeper remorse at the sight of thy scarred hands and wounded side?"
"Never think of it again, dear Ernest. I did not know it, did not feel it. It never gave me a moment's pang."
"Yes, I remember well why you did not suffer."
"But you must not remember. If you love me, Ernest, make no allusion to the past. The future is ours; youth and hope are ours; and the promises of God, sure and steadfast, are ours. I feel as Noah and his children felt when they stepped from the ark on dry land, and saw the waters of the deluge retreating, and the rainbow smiling on its clouds. What to them were the storms they had weathered, the dangers they had overcome? They were all past. Oh, my husband, let us believe that ours are past, and let us trust forever in the God of our fathers."
"I do—I do, my Gabriella. My faith has hitherto been a cold abstraction; now it is a living, vital flame, burning with steady and increasing light."
At this moment Edith, who had seated herself at the harp, remembering well the soothing influence of music on her brother's soul, touched its resounding strings; and the magnificent strains of the Gloria in Excelsis,