“What do you expect me to tell Mrs. Inge?”

“That I return my thanks for her very kind remembrance, but am closely occupied in preparing myself to teach, and have no time for gayeties.”

Mrs. Murray smiled significantly.

“Do you suppose that excuse will satisfy your friend Gordon?  He will fly for consolation to the stereotyped smile and delicious flattery of simpering Miss Maud.”

“I care not where he flies, provided I am left in peace.”

“Stop, my dear child; you do not mean what you say.  You know very well that you earnestly hope Gordon will escape the tender mercies of silly Maud and the machinations of her most amiable mamma; if you don’t, I do.  Understand that you are not to visit Susan Montgomery’s sins on Gordon’s head.  I shall come home early, and make you go to bed at nine o’clock, to punish you for your obstinacy.  By the by, Edna, Hagar tells me that you frequently sit up till three or four o’clock, poring over those heathenish documents in my son’s cabinet.  This is absurd, and will ruin your health; and beside, I doubt if what you learn is worth your trouble.  You must not sit up longer than ten o’clock.  Give me my furs.”

Edna ate her dinner alone, and went into the library to practise a difficult music lesson; but the spell of her new project was stronger than the witchery of music, and closing the piano, she ran into the “Egyptian Museum,” as Mrs. Murray termed her son’s sitting-room.

The previous night she had been reading an account of the doctrines of Zoroaster, in which there was an attempt to trace all the chief features of the Zendavesta to the Old Testament and the Jews, and now she returned to the subject with unflagging interest.

Pushing a cushioned chair close to the window, she wrapped her shawl around her, put her feet on the round of a neighboring chair, to keep them from the icy floor and gave herself up to the perusal of the volume.

The sun went down in a wintry sky; the solemn red light burning on the funeral pyre of day streamed through the undraped windows, flushed the fretted facade of the Taj Mahal, glowed on the marble floor, and warmed and brightened the serene, lovely face of the earnest young student.  As the flame faded in the west, where two stars leaped from the pearly ashes, the fine print of Edna’s book grew dim, and she turned the page to catch the mellow, silvery radiance of the full moon, which, shining low in the east, threw a ghastly lustre on the awful form and floating white hair of the Cimbrian woman on the wall.  But between the orphan and the light, close beside her chair, stood a tall, dark figure, with uncovered head and outstretched hands.

She sprang to her feet, uttering a cry of mingled alarm and delight, for she knew that erect, stately form and regal head could belong to but one person.

“Oh, Mr. Murray!  Can it be possible that you have indeed come home to your sad, desolate mother?  Oh! for her sake I am so glad!”