“Yes, yes,” whispered Hope, almost panting.

“‘Darling, we must go with them to some other land, for we are poor.’” She paused and thought hard.  “Poor we must have been; very poor.  I can see that now that I am rich.”  She paused and thought hard.  “But all was peace and love.  There were two of us, yet we seemed one.”

Then in a moment Mary left the past, her eyes resigned the film of thought, and shone with the lustre of her great heart, and she burst at once into that simple eloquence which no hearer of hers from John Baker to William Hope ever resisted.  “Ah! sweet memories, treasures of the past, why are you so dim and wavering, and this hard world so clear and glaring it seems cut out of stone?  Oh, if I had a fairy’s wand, I’d say, ’Vanish fine house and servants—­vanish wealth and luxury and strife; and you come back to me, sweet hours of peace—­and poverty—­and love.’”

Her arms were stretched out with a grace and ardor that could embellish even eloquence, when a choking sob struck her ear.  She turned her head swiftly, and there was William Hope, his hands working, his face convulsed, and the tears running down his cheeks like the very rain.

It was no wonder.  Think of it!  The child he adored, yet had parted with to save her from dire poverty, remembered that sad condition to ask for it back again, because of his love that made it sweet to her after all these years of comfort.  And of late he had been jealous, and saw, or thought, he had no great place in her heart, and never should have.

Ah, it is a rarity to shed tears of joy!  The thing is familiarly spoken of, but the truth is that many pass through this world of tears and never shed one such tear.  The few who have shed them can congratulate William Hope for this blissful moment after all he had done and suffered.

But the sweet girl who so surprised that manly heart, and drew those heavenly tears, had not the key.  She was shocked, surprised, distressed.  She burst out crying directly from blind womanly sympathy; and then she took herself to task.  “Oh, Mr. Hope! what have I done?  Ah!  I have touched some chord of memory.  Wicked, selfish girl, to distress you with my dreams.”

“Distress me!” cried Hope.  “These tears you have drawn from me are pearls of memory and drops of balm to my sore, tried heart.  I, too, have lived and struggled in a by-gone world.  I had a lovely child; she made me rich in my poverty, and happy in my homelessness.  She left me—­”

“Poor Mr. Hope!”

“Then I went abroad, drudged in foreign mines, came home and saw my child again in you.  I need no fairy’s wand to revive the past; you are my fairy—­your sweet words recall those by-gone scenes; and wealth, ambition, all I live for now, vanish into smoke.  The years themselves roll back, and all is once more peace—­and poverty—­and love.”

“Dear Mr. Hope!” said Mary, and put her forehead upon his shoulder.