h, Warren, what is fame compared to what I have found to-day?" she said, sweetly. "What is fame, and wealth, and all worldly honors, compared to a brother's love? But one thing more is needed now to make me perfectly happy."
"I know what you mean, Georgia—your husband. Is it possible you care for him still, after all he has made you suffer?"
She looked up in his face, and he was answered.
"Then, for your sake, I am sorry he has gone," he said slowly.
"Gone?" she repeated, with a paling cheek. "Gone where?"
"To France, on some important mission from government that no one can fulfill so well as himself, and—I have not the faintest idea of when he will return."
"Now that I have told you all that has befallen me," said Georgia, some half an hour later that same afternoon, as brother and sister sat side by side at the window, "I want to hear your adventures and 'hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and field' since that sad night long ago, when we parted last."
"I fear you are doomed to be disappointed, then, if you expect any such things from me," said her brother, smiling. "My life has been one of most inglorious safety so far, and I never had a hair-breadth escape of any kind, since I was born."
"How strange it is that I could ever believe you dead," said Georgia, musingly. "Miss Jerusha, too, to use her own words, constantly averred that you had 'got taken in somewheres,' and never would hear for a moment that you had perished in the storm."