heretofore received, and marking that I was no longer to be treated as a stranger to the family.  My unusual salute brought the colour back to her cheeks, but no one else took notice of it.  I observed, however, that on this occasion, instead of interposing himself between me and the ladies as usual, her father left vacant the place next to her; and I seated myself at her feet.  She would have exchanged her reclining posture for that of the others, but her mother gently drew her down to her former position.

“Eveena,” said my host, “I have told our friend, what you know, that there is in this world a society, of which I am a member, whose principles are not those of our countrymen, but resemble rather those which supplied the impulses on which he acted to-day.  This much you know.  What you would have learned a few days hence, I mean that you and he shall now hear at the same time.”

“Before you enter on that subject,” interposed Zulve timidly—­for it is most unusual for a lady to interfere in her husband’s conversation, much more to offer a suggestion or correction—­but yet earnestly, “let me say, on my own part, what I am sure you must have said already on yours.  If there be now, or ever shall be, anything we can do for our guest, anything we can give that he would value, not in requital, but in memory of what he has done for us—­whatever it should cost us, though he should ask the most precious thing we possess, it will be our pride and pleasure—­the greatest pleasure he can afford us—­to grant it.”

The time and the surroundings were not perhaps exactly suitable to the utterance of the wish suggested by these words; but I knew so little what might be in store for me, and understood so well the difficulty and uncertainty of finding future opportunities of intercourse with the ladies at least of the family, that I dared not lose the present.  I spoke at once upon the impulse of the moment, with a sense of reckless desperation not unlike that with which an artillerist fires the train whose explosion may win for him the obsidional wreath or blow him into atoms.  “You and my host,” I said, “have one treasure that I have learned to covet, but it is exactly the most precious thing you possess, and one which it would be presumptuous to ask as reward; even had I not owed to Esmo the life I perilled for Eveena, and if I had acted from choice and freely, instead of doing only what only the vilest of cowards could have failed to attempt.  In asking it indeed, I feel that I cancel whatever claim your extravagant estimate of that act can possibly ascribe to me.”

“We don’t waste words,” answered Esmo, “in saying what we don’t mean, and I confirm fully what my wife has said.  There is nothing we possess that we shall not delight to give as token of regard and in remembrance of this day to the saviour of our child.”

“If,” I said, “I find a neighbour’s purse containing half his fortune, and return it to him, he may offer me what reward I ask, but would hardly think it reasonable if I asked for the purse and its contents.  But you have only one thing I care to possess—­that which I have, by God’s help, been enabled to save to-day.  If I must ask a gift, give me Eveena herself.”