This had the effect of rousing Edith, who, faint with excitement, was led by Arthur out into the open air, thus leaving Richard alone with his first love of twenty-five years ago.  It did not seem to him possible that so many years had passed over the face which, at seventeen, was marvellously beautiful, and which still was very, very fair and youthful in its look, for Grace was wondrously well preserved and never passed for over thirty, save among the envious ones, who, old themselves, strove hard to make others older still.

“Time has dealt lightly with you, Grace,” Richard said, after the first curious glance.  “I could almost fancy you were Grace Elmendorff yet,” and he lifted gallantly one of her chestnut curls, just as he used to do in years agone, when she was Grace Elmendorff.

This little act recalled so vivedly the scenes of other days that Grace burst into a flood of tears, and hurried from the room to the parlor adjoining, where, unobserved, she could weep again over the hopes forever fled.  Thus left to himself, with the exception of little Dick, Richard had leisure to look about him, descrying ere long the life-sized portrait of Nina hanging on the wall.  In an instant he stood before what was to him, not so much a picture painted on rude canvas, as a living reality—­the golden-haired angel, who was now as closely identified with his every thought and feeling as even Edith herself had ever been.  She had followed him over land and sea, bringing comfort to him in his dark hours of pain, coloring his dreams with rainbow hues of promise, buoying him up and bidding him wait a little—­try yet longer, when the only hope worth his living for now seemed to be dying out, and when at last it, the wonderful cure, was done, and those gathered around him said each to the other “He will see,” he heard nothing for the buzzing sound which filled his ear, and the low voice whispering to him, “I did it—­brought the daylight straight from heaven.  God said I might—­and I did.  Nina takes care of you.”

They told him that he had fainted from excess of joy, but Richard believed that Nina had been with him all the same, cherishing that conviction even to this hour, when he stood there face to face with her, unconsciously saying to himself, “Gloriously beautiful Nina.  In all my imaginings of you I never saw aught so fair as this.  Edith is beautiful, but not—­”

“As beautiful as Nina was, am I?” said a voice behind him, and turning round, Richard drew Edith to his side, and encircling her with his arm answered frankly,

“No, my child, you are not as beautiful as Nina.”

“Disappointed in me, are you not?  Tell me honestly,” and Edith peered up half-archly, half-timidly into the eyes whose glance she scarcely yet dared meet.

“I can hardly call it disappointment,” Richard answered, smiling down upon her.  “You are different-looking from what I supposed, that is all.  Still you are much like what I remember your mother to have been, save that her eyes were softer than yours, and her lip not quite so proudly curved.”