The grateful gaze of Marian thanked the lady, and she asked: 

“Tell me the name of my angel nurse.”

“Rachel Holmes,” answered the lady, blushing gently.  “My husband is a surgeon in the United States army.  He is on leave of absence now for the purpose of taking me home to see my father and mother—­they live in London.  I am of English parentage.”

Marian feebly pressed her hand, and then said: 

“You are very good to ask me no questions, and I thank you with all my heart; for, dear lady, I can tell you nothing.”

The next day the vessel which had put into New York Harbor on call, sailed for Liverpool.

Marian slowly improved.  Her purposes were not very clear or strong yet—­mental and physical suffering and exhaustion had temporarily weakened and obscured her mind.  Her one strong impulse was to escape, to get away from the scenes of such painful associations and memories, and to go home, to take refuge in her own native land.  The thought of returning to Maryland, to meet the astonishment, the wonder, the conjectures, the inquiries, and perhaps the legal investigation that might lead to the exposure and punishment of Thurston, was insupportable to her heart.  No, no! rather let the width of the ocean divide her from all those horrors.  Undoubtedly her friends believed her dead—­let it be so—­let her remain as dead to them.  She should leave no kindred behind her, to suffer by her loss—­should wrong no human being.  True, there were Miriam and Edith!  But that her heart was exhausted by its one great, all-consuming grief, it must have bled for them!  Yet they had already suffered all they could possibly suffer from the supposition of her death—­it was now three weeks since they had reason to believe her dead, and doubtless kind Nature had already nursed them into resignation and calmness, that would in time become cheerfulness.  If she should go back, there would be the shock, the amazement, the questions, the prosecutions, perhaps the conviction, and the sentence, and the horrors of a state prison for one the least hair of whose head she could not willingly hurt; and then her own early death, or should she survive, her blighted life.  Could these consequences console or benefit Edith or Miriam?  No, no, they would augment grief.  It was better to leave things as they were—­better to remain dead to them—­a dead sorrow might be forgotten—­living one never!  For herself, it was better to take fate as she found it—­to go home to England, and devote her newly restored life, and her newly acquired fortune, to those benevolent objects that had so lately occupied so large a share of her heart.  Some means also should be found—­when she should grow stronger, and her poor head should be clearer, so that she should be able to think—­to make Edith and Miriam the recipients of all the benefit her wealth could possibly confer upon them.  And so in recollecting, meditating, planning, and trying