Miriam started as if she had seen a spirit, fixing her dark eyes with passionate intensity on the sweet grey eyes of Ethne. Her whole frame quivered.
“Lady! child!” she said. “To thee, I know, it would be impossible to lie, even in the fond hope of binding up a broken heart. You would always know that nothing but truth could heal the wounded spirit, or bind up the broken heart. Nothing but the love which is true—nothing but God.”
“Nothing but God, Who is Truth and Love,” Ethne said, with her infectious smile; “Who has heard thy prayers and seen thy tears all through these weary years; Who gave thee compassion which made thee good as an angel to me. He has led me to thy child.”
And then she told Miriam the story of Rachel.
As early as possible on the morrow Ethne and Marius went to the farm on the mountains, and there they found Rachel amongst her children; the dark-eyed boys, and one fair, golden-haired baby girl. Father, mother, and children at once came down the hills to the villa of Fabricius. There, by many tokens, the mother recognized her child, whilst by an instinctive sympathy their hearts drew together.
When Eleazar awoke, the little group around him, Rachel and her sons, and the golden-haired babe on Miriam the grandmother’s knee, were beside him.
“Who are these?” he said, starting up, with eyes wide open and bewildered, yet with a dawning consciousness in them, like one waking out of a dream.
“It is only thy Rachel, our Rachel, and her children,” Miriam said, in tender, quiet tones, caressing the little one on her knee. “Thou hast always known they would come, and now, see, they are here!”
“Is it Paradise?” he said. “Are we in the garden of God?”
“Nay, beloved,” Miriam replied, very quietly, “except as every true marriage brings us back to Eden.”