"So he writes me word. It's something he has taken in hand and is going to perfect. If it comes to anything I shall return from Barbadoes and join him."
"Oh," said Oswald. "Well, Mark, I hope you will have a pleasant voyage out there, and that you will find your journey all you can wish."
Dinner would soon be ready, and Sara was shown to her room. It overlooked the Abbey graveyard. She took off her bonnet and stood there, lost in many reminiscences of the past, in the changes that time had wrought, in the uncertain contemplation of the future. What would be poor Mark Cray's future? Would he abide at Barbadoes, applying himself as well as his abilities allowed him to the pursuit of his legitimate profession?--or would his unstable, weak mind be dazzled with these illegitimate and delusive speculations to the end, until they engulfed him?
How strangely, how wonderfully had they been brought through changes and their accompanying trials! In this very room, where she now stood, Oswald had been born. The poor little boy, sent adrift as may be said without a home, motherless, as good as fatherless, had worked out his own way in the world, striving always to make a friend of God. Ah, when did it ever fail? It is the only sure help in life.
And what had her own later troubles been; her cares, anxieties, sorrows? Looking back, Sara saw great cause to reproach herself: why had she so given way to despair? It is true that she had never, in a certain sense, a degree, lost her trust in God: but she had not believed there could be this bright ending. A little ray of the setting sun was reflected on the tombstone formerly noticed; it fell on the significant inscription, "Buried in misery." Sara wondered whether he, the unhappy tenant, had never learned to abide in God.
So absorbed was she in thought that she did not notice any one had come into the room, until a hand was laid upon her shoulder. It was her husband's. He put some letters down in the broad, old-fashioned window-seat.
"They have been sent on to me here from the office," he explained, as Sara glanced at them. "Business letters, all. In one there's a bit of gossip, though: in Allister's."
"Is one of them from Allister?"
"Yes. Jane's going to be married. They have met with some Scotch gentleman out there, an old acquaintance of Jane's, and things are settled. Frank says his tongue is broad Scotch, and he can't understand half he says. Jane does, however, so it's all right."
A smile played upon Sara lips, as she thought of the past jealousy. She might tell her husband of it some time. "Does Mr. Allister keep well!" she asked.