She started, as one awaking out of a dream, and looked into his face, blushing scarlet.

“Good heavens, what a beautiful creature!” said Tom to himself, as quite a new emotion passed through him.  Quite new it was, whatsoever it was; and he was aware of it.  He had had his passions, his intrigues, in past years, and prided himself—­few men more—­on understanding women; but the expression of the face, and the strange words with which she had greeted him, added to the broad fact of her having offered her own life for his, raised in him a feeling of chivalrous awe and admiration, which no other woman had ever called up.

“Madam,” he said again; “I can repay you with nothing but thanks:  but, to judge from your conduct last night, you are one of those people who will find reward enough in knowing that you have done a noble and heroic action.”

She looked at him very steadfastly, blushing still.  Thurnall, be it understood, was (at least, while his face was in the state in which Heaven intended it to be, half hidden in a silky-brown beard) a very good-looking fellow; and (to use Mark Armsworth’s description) “as hard as a nail; as fresh as a rose; and stood on his legs like a game-cock.”  Moreover, as Willis said approvingly, he had spoken to her “as if he was a duke, and she was a duchess.”  Besides, by some blessed moral law, the surest way to make oneself love any human being is to go and do him a kindness; and therefore Grace had already a tender interest in Tom, not because he had saved her, but she him.  And so it was, that a strange new emotion passed through her heart also, though so little understood by her, that she put it forthwith into words.

“You might repay me,” she said in a sad and tender tone.

“You have only to command me,” said Tom, wincing a little as the words passed his lips.

“Then turn to God, now in the day of His mercies.  Unless you have turned to Him already.”

One glance at Tom’s rising eyebrows told her what he thought upon those matters.

She looked at him sadly, lingeringly, as if conscious that she ought not to look too long, and yet unable to withdraw her eyes.—­“Ah! and such a precious soul as yours must be; a precious soul—­all taken, and you alone left!  God must have high things in store for you.  He must have a great work for you to do.  Else, why are you not as one of these!  Oh, think! where would you have been at this moment if God had dealt with you as with them?”

“Where I am now, I suppose,” said Tom quietly.

“Where you are now?”

“Yes:  where I ought to be.  I am where I ought to be now.  I suppose if I had found myself anywhere else this morning, I should have taken it as a sign that I was wanted there, and not here.”

Grace heaved a sigh at words which were certainly startling.  The Stoic optimism of the world-hardened doctor was new and frightful to her.