"Poor--lost--Alice--nineteen--just my----"
She turned toward the sleeper with a startled cry. He was awake and sitting up.
She advanced toward him. He noticed her tears and the morning robe in which she was dressed.
"Since it happened. After I saw father up stairs, I came down and found you here asleep. And Elmer--forgive me--it was wrong, but I did not mean to stay here so long----"
"Oh! Pardon you--pardon you--why should I? I dreamed the angels watched me."
"I was anxious, and we owe you so much. We can never reward you--never!"
He opened his arms wide. A new and beautiful light came into her eyes.
"No. Love is the best reward--and it is yours."
Our own politics have so absorbed the attention of the press and the public for the last six months, that events of decided international prominence have attracted merely a brief notice, instead of the careful discussion which their importance warranted. Even the "Eastern question," that has so long kept the European world in a state of excitement and anxiety almost as intense and even more painful than that in which our own country is now plunged, excited but a fitful interest here. It was only by an effort that we could extend our political horizon as far east as Constantinople. All beyond was comparative darkness. In this darkness, however, history has gone steadily on accumulating new and important data, which must be taken note of if we would keep up with the record of the times.
The term "Eastern question" has come to mean the political complications arising from the presence of the Turkish empire in Europe. The expression might much more appropriately be applied to the serious difficulties that have for the last year and a half existed between the governments of England and China, and which have, as it now appears, been brought to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion. These difficulties sprang out of the murder of an English subject, Augustus Raymond Margary by name, who was travelling in an official capacity in a remote part of the Chinese empire. They were still further complicated by an almost simultaneous attack upon a British exploring expedition that had just crossed the Chinese frontier from Burmah, with the intention of surveying and opening up to trade an overland route between that country and the Middle Kingdom. To understand the matter it will be necessary to give a brief recapitulation of some events that went before.