The "breaking down" predicted by Dr. Winters, took the form, not of hysterical emotion, as he had anticipated, but of physical languor and spiritual apathy, which were more alarming. Jessie moved, spoke, and thought like one in a trance; acquiescing in every proposal made by her sister and Roy; obeying every request without demur or inquiry. If left to herself she asked nothing except to be allowed to sit or lie passive for hours together; her great eyes closed or blank; her countenance set in the gloomy weariness that had marked it from the moment her hand left her dead father's forehead—a look that said she had henceforward nothing to hope for or to fear.

Few husbands would have had tolerance with this excessive grief for the loss of a parent, however beloved, and worthy of filial attachment. One might search far and long without finding a man whose sympathy with the demonstration of this would incite him to warmer love and fonder care for her, who, for the time, overlooked his claim to supreme regard in her devotion to a memory.

"You could not mourn more bitterly for me !" I once heard a man say in impatient reproach, upon surprising his wife in tears within a week after she had committed an indulgent parent to the grave.

He was a good man, and an affectionate husband, but he could not endure the semblance of a divided allegiance.

Had Roy Fordham's love been of this sensitive and exclusive type, it would have been chafed threadbare before the honeymoon was one-tenth wasted. The new bond between them she ignored entirely—not, it was evident, in wilfulness or shyness, but because it had no place in her thoughts; was a matter of no moment in comparison with the event that steeped her whole being in despondency. It was well that neither he nor Eunice had any knowledge of the continuous warfare of the summer, the fiercer struggle of that early September day, the morrow of which had brought a fresh sorrow in her father's illness. Had they comprehended all this, superadded to their fears that her three weeks' watching and its finale had seriously affected her nervous system, they would have had small hope of the curative power of Nature and of Love. She was, in reality, insane for the three days immediately succeeding her marriage, if lack of feeling, thought, and connected memory signify mental aberration. In after years, this period was almost a blank in the retrospect, a confusing dissolving view that defied her scrutiny. While it lasted it was a nightmare from which she had not strength to awaken.

When she was led by Roy to take a last look at her father's face as he lay in his coffin ready to be transported to the church, her eyes were vacant and dry, her features emotionless.

"He looks very natural!" she said slowly, like one trying to recall the conventional phrase in such circumstances.

When Eunice bent weepingly to kiss the frozen lips where still lingered the smile of ineffable peace with which he had named his wife, Jessie eyed her with a mixture of wonder and perplexity; and remarking again, "Very natural! almost life-like!" turned away, with the air of one who had said and done all that could be required of her.

In an agony of alarm, Roy sought Dr. Winters, who had called to inquire after the health of the family, and to see if he could be of service in their affliction. Eunice had taken charge of her sister at night, and reported that what little sleep had visited the latter had been won by the use of anodynes. Had the physician—asked the bridegroom—a sedative, potent enough to induce slumber for several hours, the after effect of which would not be increased cerebral excitement? Come what might, Jessie must not witness the obsequies appointed for that forenoon. Her mind seemed, to him, to need but a touch to complete its overthrow. While the two gentlemen held counsel, Eunice entered with the welcome news that Jessie had, on leaving the parlor where the remains lay, gone voluntarily to her own room—-she having shared her sister's since their common bereavement—thrown herself upon the bed and fallen into a deep sleep.

The church-bell was not tolled for the pastor's funeral, and a band of trusty yeomen, stationed fifty yards up and down the road, prevented vehicles from approaching the gate of Parsonage or church-yard. The reason was quickly disseminated, and the value of the precaution universally admitted. Mingled with the tears that fell upon the bier of the faithful servant of God , were earnest prayers for the restoration of health and reason to the daughter—"the people's" pride and pet as she had been his—the merry, popular "little Jessie," who was known to every household in the parish. Many wistful eyes sought the closed blinds, behind which she lay wrapped in death-like slumber.

"The only hope for life and brain!" Dr. Winters had pronounced, and the dictum was repeated far and near with awed looks and subdued breath.

Within the manse, all was hushed and dark. Eunice sat with the sleeper while the services at the church went forward.

"Do not separate us this morning!" was her petition to Roy, who would have taken the post himself. "I have nobody left but her!"

She interpreted correctly the meaning of the imperfect sounds that penetrated her seclusion—the funeral psalm, the dull tramp of many feet from the front to the back of the church; the awful pause—like no other upon earth—-that told the coffin was sinking to its place—the voice of prayer—the brief, reverent utterances with which the dear dust was committed to the keeping of the Lord of Life, through all the coming ages of Time—then, the muffled tumult of departure. She sat quiet until the end; restraining sob and sigh that the beloved living should not be disturbed; staying her heart upon the Father of the fatherless, the God whose goodness the expiring saint had charged his children never to forget.

Roy relieved her as soon as the Services were over.

"Thank you," he said, kissing her with a brother's fond sympathy. "Go now, and leave her to me. I will call you, should you be needed."

Alternately, and in company, they watched her until Dr. Winters' third visit that day brought hope that was confidence to their tried souls.

"If she sleep, she shall do well!" said Dr. Baxter, when Roy carried the glad tidings to him, that the stupor had changed to natural slumber. He was sitting in the window of Mr. Kirke's study; for a wonder, without book or paper before him, but absorbed in contemplation of the mountain scenery.

"You are wearing yourself out," he added, observing that Roy's complexion, tanned by the sea-voyage, was fast regaining its natural hue, and that his eyes bore evidence of grief and anxiety. "Jessie is safe in her sister's care, and while she sleeps cannot miss you. Bide here a bit with me"—he often relapsed into the Scotch dialect— "and refresh yourself by a survey of this picture. I must quit you all to-morrow, and I would have a few words with you before I go."

Jessie was alone when she awoke. Eunice had been called to the parlor to see a parishioner from the other side of the mountain who had not heard of Mr. Kirke's decease until that morning, had ridden twenty miles to attend the funeral, and arrived too late. Eunice had been too long the obedient servant of the congregation to hesitate as to the course she should pursue in the dilemma. Jessie slept soundly and peacefully, and Roy would be back soon. She closed the door noiselessly, and obeyed the summons of her father's friend.

Summer zephyrs were coquetting with the sombre pine-branches; summer-scents were stealing up to Jessie's windows from the garden. To such wooing whispers and goodly odors had she awakened many mornings during many years. She mistook the colored light visible through the shutters for dawn; marvelled sleepily that her limbs ached and her head was weary.

"It must be time to get up!" she meditated, 'twixt sleeping and waking. "Yet I am not rested. I have · not heard Eunice or Patsey go downstairs."

In tossing her arm up to pillow her head for a second nap, she saw her sleeve. How had she happened to fall asleep without undressing? She sat upright, and tried to remember when and how she had gone to bed overnight. How queerly her head felt!

"As if it had been dead and was coming to life again!" was her simile.

She was at home, and in her own room; everything about her was in its usual order. Yet something had happened. What was it? A Bible lay on the stand by the bed. Between the leaves was a handkerchief. She drew it out, and saw Eunice's name in the corner. How came it there? Had Eunice sat with her, last evening? If so, why? Her feet were oddly numb when she stood up; she was weak and dizzy as from illness or fasting; but she walked to the door, opened it, and hearkened for movements upon the lower floor. It was so quiet, she heard the droning of a humming-bird moth which had come to look for untimely blossoms in the honey-suckle draping the hall-window. Another sound, almost as monotonous, blended with this—the steady flow of a man's voice talking or reading in the study. Who was her father's guest? And what hour of day was it? It must be morning, since she had just awakened, yet looked, and felt like evening.

A draught from the open door she had left blew that opposite slightly ajar. Surely, that was Dr. Baxter's voice! Had she dreamed of his arrival! A fearful dream, the dim recollection of which made her sick and faint? Sinking to a settee that stood outside the study-door, seeking to stimulate her half-dead brain by rubbing her temples hard, she endeavored to gather the meaning of what Dr. Baxter was saying. He was in the middle of one of the monologues which were sometimes a bore; sometimes a delight. A gleam of amusement flitted over the wan, vacant visage of the eavesdropper as she pictured to herself—still as if she were somebody else and not Jessie Kirke—the knotted handkerchief she doubted not was on active duty.

"Is it consistent with the Divine economy for an immortal being to spend twenty-five, fifty, threescore and ten years, in the acquisition of knowledge and experience for which he is to have no use in the world to come? Believe me, they are in grievous error, denying themselves the abundant consolations which the hope of a continued and eternal existence should bring, who overlook the plain teachings of the word and the almost divine intuitions of the human soul on this question. The Future Life! What is it but the stretching into regions yet unknown to us, into the Eternity of which we have but imperfect conceptions, of the life which now is? the Present, which is the journey toward the continuing City. Into that state we shall, it is true, be born as spiritual babes. But not idiots! As the instincts and actions of the babe prefigure the disposition and appetites of the man, so the habits of thought and feeling, the inclinations and aspirations of the newly disembodied spirit will bear a certain relation to that which it will at length become—the perfect man in Christ Jesus. As hereditary taints and hereditary virtues are reproduced in the mortal babe, we shall find definite traces of our earthly individuality in the heavenly nurseling. And that the proportion which the loftiest attainments of the profoundest philosopher will bear to the infancy of this celestial creature will be less—far less than that which the mere instincts of the earthly infant bear to the wisdom and strength of the adult, I also believe. We shall have to begin with the rudiments of infinite knowledge. But we shall have Eternity in which to learn."

Jessie still chafed her forehead, where wrinkles of pained perplexity gathered and deepened, as she tried to put word to word and sentence to sentence. She lost what came next in vainly attempting to get the sense of these last sentences. Perhaps she should understand better when she was quite awake.

"Such proportion as the seed sustains to the mature plant, the ovum to the living, moving creature, you will tell me—" Dr. Baxter was saying, when she again lent attention to his dissertation. "I grant it. But like produces like in vegetable and animal generation, and why deny the spiritual analogy? What we call Death is but the threshold—and a narrow one—separating the vestibule from the temple. It is all one building—the Life which God has given. When I cast off the cumbrous shell I have borne so long that I foolishly fancy it is myself —a part of my being without which I should be naked, shivering, and helpless; when it slips from my soul by reason of its own weight and rottenness, I shall enter upon no new existence. It will be I still—not a different creation. For a moment, perhaps, I may not know what has happened. Thus, I have seen a butterfly trembling with the strangeness of his position, clinging with damp, untried wings to the bough that supports the little pendant coffin, now broken—from which he has just crept. A delicious sense of liberty and space there may be as one breathes more freely in leaving a close room for the outer air. I shall miss the incubus of the body, and the fleshly desires I have sloughed off with it. Then will dawn upon me gradually—as I have strength to bear the revelation, that I have passed ! Not been made over, mark you! We are nowhere taught that regeneration is a posthumous experience. 'He is gone!' some one will say. And perhaps another—'He is dead!'

"Dead! I tell you, my friend, I shall be the livest man in that room! Not until that hour of glorious emancipation shall I know what life is!"

There was an interval of stillness. Jessie had staggered to her feet. Her eyes, no longer blank, were dilated with intensest and eager inquiry. What did it signify—this talk of death and the life to come? Who was the speaker's companion? Her father? Oh, why did he not speak?

Another voice, deeper and sweeter, made reverent response:

"Thanks be to God , for His unspeakable gift!"

She flung the door widely open; faced the astonished man with the demand, shrieked, rather than spoken:

"Where is he? He said that ! my father! Where is he now? "

"Jessie, love!"

Roy caught her in his arms, but she pushed him from her.

"I will know! I am going mad! Where is my father?"

Dr. Baxter secured her fluttering hands; looked steadfastly, yet not sternly, into her eyes.

"He may be here , my child! We cannot tell. Be sure he remembers and loves you still, he, who, while in the flesh, held you so dear. Believe this and be still under the mighty but loving hand of God !"

Her head sank upon his shoulder.

" You would not deceive me! You are a good man, and speak the truth always!" she sobbed, excitedly. "Is my father really dead? Oh, I remember it all now!"

With the resuscitation of the torpid intellect, came a flood of tears, mingled with anguished exclamations—an hysterical attack that only abated with her strength. By nine o'clock she was asleep, exhausted, but free from fever and the nervous spasms that had made the seizure alarming at first. The danger was tided over, for the present, and ere the rest separated for the night, Dr. Baxter returned thanks for "the signal deliverance," kneeling between the husband and sister; besought comfort and peace for the smitten household in fervent, affectionate words, which showed that however his thought might stray from the subjects to which his acquaintances would hold him, his heart was always in the right place.

"I cannot thank you as I should for all you have been to us—all you have done for us!" said Eunice, as they talked of the morrow's parting.

"Do not, my dear! The privilege and the gratitude have been and are mine. God sent me to you. I bless Him for it!"

It was after sunrise when Jessie unclosed her eyes. Eunice's chair was still by her pillow, but it was empty. Her mind was clear. She had no difficulty in recalling how the gentle hands had laid her to sleep; the mellow voice read to her from The Book—"A prayer of the afflicted, when he poureth out his heart before God ." Dear Eunice! her love—tried as it had been by her perversity and reserve, her late violent and selfish distress—was more precious than ever before. She would arise and share, if she could not lighten, her labors and her burdens. As she sat up in bed, she espied upon a lounge near by, a gentleman's dressing-gown. The blood sprang to her cheeks in a burning torrent, for the truth flashed instantly upon her. Roy had asserted his right to the exclusive guardianship of his wife; had sent the weary sister to take the rest she needed, and himself kept watch over her through the night. There came to her no softening thought of the anxious affection that had held his eyes waking while others slept. She was only angry—desperately indignant that he had dared sit there and watch her without her knowledge or consent. The blind, mad moment passed, she stood, for many more—white as death—thinking! Then she locked the door. Roy might enter at any instant, or Eunice glide in to ask how she was, and she must be alone while she thought it all out! No mortal eye witnessed the fight of the next hour. The woman—torn and dashed by a legion of passions verily believed, while they had the mastery, that she would not survive it. She never told the tale of her hurts to her dearest earthly friend. It was something she would not renew by relating, even when time had almost worn away the scars.

She was made of sterner stuff than she knew. Ere she quitted her chamber, her resolution was taken—every trace of the strife put out of sight. She had "light enough to see the next step." If she were bound for life against her will and conscience, Roy was basely wronged—and through no fault he had committed against her. If her course were to be joyless—a strait and rough path, his was no smoother or more delightsome. Recompense him for what she had lost for him, she could not, but she could and she would appear dutiful and resigned.

Fordham coming in from the brisk walk in the early morning air by which he had tried to make up for his vigil, found her in the parlor, arranging the books upon bracket-shelves and dusting the rare old china bowl and vases which the sisters let no one but themselves handle. Her breakfast-toilette had been carefully made, contrasting strikingly with yesterday's négligé . Her rich hair was braided as she used to wear it, and banded with black ribbon; her white cambric dress was belted with the same, and loops of narrower hung from her mourning brooch. She comprehended all that had happened within the week; accepted the expediencies and proprieties of her position with its sorrows and duties, and he honored her for it. Her attire showed that she consulted his taste, wished to be fair in his eyes, and for this he loved her better than ever, if that could be. He did not know it, but the woman he had wedded never, in her previous or subsequent life, gave another equal proof of strength of mind and purpose, as when, physically faint and mentally distraught by the frightful ordeals she had already sustained, she lifted this, the heaviest cross of all, and adjusted it to her shoulders for a lifelong journey.

The greeting between them was affectionate on his side—grave upon hers—very quiet on both, as befitted the circumstances of the household.

"Ah, Jessie, darling! I am glad you are well enough to be down stairs! But are you not exerting yourself too much?" he exclaimed at his entrance.

And—"I am much better, thank you! entirely able to be about as usual," was the reply, uttered without the flicker of a blush.

Then he kissed the cheek that was neither averted nor offered.

Dr. Baxter and Eunice appearing, a minute afterward, saw nothing amiss. There may have been nothing, yet the young husband had looked for a different reception—now that his Jessie was declared to be "quite herself again."

He was a patient man and a considerate, and the secret disappointment was condemned as soon as recognized. This was not the time for love-making—or—this was clearly Jessie's feeling. To oppose her scruple while her grief was so fresh and her nerves unsettled, would be persecution. She deserved all grace and indulgence at his hands, and she should have it. Their life—as theirs was all before them. He would be a help not an embarrassment, to the orphans. Jessie loved him! Jessie was his wife! That was enough!

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Roy Fordham remained ten days longer in Dundee in consequence of an arrangement made by his brother professors by which they divided his duties among them. Dr. Baxter, whose partiality for him was proverbial, taking a double share upon himself. The furlough was not accepted by him without misgivings. He felt that he ought to be in his place at the beginning of the college session, and that to avail himself further of the generous kindness of trustees and faculty, after a year's absence, was an abuse of the same. Dr. Baxter wrote him two strong, short letters to refute this idea, and he found additional solace for his conscience in the discovery that he was needed by the sisters. Eunice and he were joint executors of Mr. Kirke's small property. To Jessie were left her mother's dowry with the accumulated interest; her mother's picture, and certain articles of jewelry, dress, and furniture, which had been hers. Everything else was Eunice's—a portion that did not nearly equal her sister's, but with which she was more than content. The settlement of the estate was easily accomplished. The just man had no debts, and the few legal papers needful to secure the title of his possessions to his children were in perfect order.

At the end of a week the only open question was that of Eunice's residence. Roy had engaged a house in Hamilton, and was urgent in his desire that she should live with Jessie and himself. The conscientious elder sister hesitated in the knowledge that her income would not support her in like comfort anywhere else.

"My inclination leads-me to follow Jessie," she confessed to her brother-in-law. "My sense of duty to myself and to you makes me doubt the propriety and justice of living in comparative idleness, when, if I had not the shelter of your roof, I must work to eke out a maintenance."

Which quibble Roy pronounced absurd and far-fetched.

"Quite unworthy of sensible Eunice! To say nothing of the manifest unkindness to our poor girl here," he said, as his wife entered the room where he was sitting. "Come here, Love, and convince this unreasonable and sceptical woman that she is indispensable to our happiness."

Jessie yielded passively to the arm that drew her to his knee.

"What is it?" she asked, listlessly.

Roy gave an abstract of the situation.

She looked confused—uncertain whether she had heard him aright. It was an effort to understand anything, sometimes. Roy and Eunice glanced from her to one another. They saw that dazed look, heard her stammer oftener than either liked; dreaded nothing else so much as they did the repetition of the scenes attending their father's demise and burial.

"Of course she will live with me—with us, wherever we go!" she rejoined. "Unless you object"—to Roy. "But I was under the impression that you wished it,—that the matter was definitely arranged."

"It is, now!" said Roy confidently, and Eunice did not dispute it.

There was a clear, more constant light in her eye, now that the responsibility of the decision was removed from her, and the step determined, upon without her vote. The prospect of separation from her sister was very painful, and there were other reasons why Hamilton should be a pleasant home to them all. This was her representation of the case to herself and to the friends who lamented losing her.

"Mourning is very becoming to Miss Kirke!" was the usual remark of these visitors upon leaving the Parsonage.

And—"She is really a most lovely woman. What will the congregation do without her?"

Roy was to leave them for a fortnight, to attend to his classes, and forward the preparations for the reception of his bride. When all was ready for their removal, he would return to superintend the sale of furniture, stock, etc., then take the sisters back to town with him.

"My family!" he said, in forced gayety, on the morning of his departure. "I assure you, my consequence in my own eyes is mightily augmented by the acquisition of my new honors."

Eunice called up one of her slow, bright smiles in acknowledgement. Jessie appeared to heed the compliment as little as she did the parting, that drew tears from her sister's eyes and choked Roy's farewell directions as to the care she must take of herself while he was away.

"I shall write to you every day, my sweet wife," he promised. "And it will not harm you—it may help you to while away the time, if you can scribble a few lines to me in return, now and then."

"If I can I will. If you wish it I will write certainly. But don't expect to hear every day from me. There's very little here to write about, you know," answered Jessie.

Eunice wondered, to reverent admiration, at the love and forbearance with which he thanked her for the concession.

They attended him to the porch. The morning was foggy, and Roy put Jessie back in the shelter of the hall-door.

"It is too damp for you out here! Don't stand there to see me off!"

Eunice—maybe he—would have been better satisfied had she disregarded the loving command. As it was, when he waved his hand from the carriage-door, Eunice stood alone in the doorway. Yet she was sure Jessie did not mean to be ungracious; that she was not really insensible to the devotion of the husband of her choice; that but for the stay of his presence she must have gone mad or died in her overwhelming grief. What she mistook for unwifelike reserve was an incessant effort to control herself to play the woman and not the child. It was best not to interfere even so far as to hint that Roy's kindest schemes for her comfort and pleasure as often as not were unnoticed by verbal thanks or grateful look from her whom he aimed to benefit. As Jessie's interest in the outer world and passing events revived, this blemish would vanish. Older people, who had known more of the discipline of life, had fallen into the mistake of idolizing their sorrows while they were new.

The sisters were at tea on the third day of Mr. Fordham's absence, when a letter was brought to Jessie.

"From Roy!" she said, quietly, and laid it down by her plate until the meal was finished,—Eunice hurrying through hers in the belief that the wife wished to be alone when she read it.

Instead of this, Jessie broke the seal, and read the four closely written pages by the lamp upon the supper-table, while her sister washed the silver and china in the same little cedar-wood pail, with shining brass hoops, her mother had used for this purpose a quarter of a century before. Eunice was inclined to be scrupulous in the matters of extreme cleanliness and system in housekeeping, and neatness and fitness of apparel; and had other and quaint, but never unpleasant, peculiarities that leaned toward what the vulgar and unappreciative style "old-maidism." But she was a bonny picture to behold to-night, her black dress setting off her fairness to exquisite advantage; her features chastened into purer outline and a softer serenity by sorrow; her eyes more beautiful for the shadows that had darkened them.

She was younger in appearance and feeling than her companion, who scanned, without change of expression and complexion, the love-words that had streamed, a strong, living tide, from the writer's heart. She read it all, from address to signature; then handed it to her sister, who had just summoned Patsey to remove the hot water and towels.

"There are several messages to you in it," she said, languidly. "You can read them for yourself."

Eunice drew back.

"I don't think he meant it for any eyes but yours, dear. Tell me what he says to me."

"I should have to go all over it again in order to do that," returned Jessie. "They are scattered sentences—business items and the like. You may look for them at your leisure. I shall leave the letter upon the table here."

She put it down under her lamp, and turned her chair to the fire.

This was their sitting-room, now that the two, with Patsey, composed the household. By tacit consent, they avoided the parlor, as recalling too vividly the gatherings and the happiness of other days. Jessie had leaned back in her cushioned seat, staring, in a blank, purposeless way, at the fire for five minutes or more, when Eunice took her place with her work-box on the other side of the hearth.

"You insist, then, that I shall read your love-letter?" she asked, pleasantly.

Faithful to her promise to Roy to do all in her power for the restoration of Jessie's native cheerfulness, she compelled herself to wear a tranquil countenance in her sight, to speak hopefully, and, when she could, brightly, in addressing her.

Jessie neither smiled nor frowned. She looked simply and wearily indifferent.

"If you please," she said, without withdrawing her eyes from the blazing logs.

Eunice skimmed the first three pages cursorily, on the watch for any mention of her own name, beset, all the while, by the idea that her act in opening the letter at all bordered upon profanation, and affected almost to tears by stray sentences she could not avoid seeing, eloquent of the young husband's tender compassion for his loved one, his longings to be with her, and fond prognostications of the peace and joy of their future life.

At the top of the fourth page, a passage seemed to dart up at her from the sheet, and, leaping into view, to be changed into characters of red-hot flame:

"What a discreet little woman you are, never to hint to me your knowledge of Orrin's engagement! The communication took me completely by surprise. He would scarcely believe that you had not told me; said that he went down to Dundee on purpose to impart to you the agreeable and important secret. The marriage is fixed for December. I always prophesied that he would marry in haste when he had once selected the lady, whom I am extremely curious to meet. He has floated from flower to flower so long that his selection ought to be worth seeing. You know her, he tells me. I shall expect a full-length description of her—done in your finest style, when I return. I own I should be better satisfied that he is to be made as happy as I would have him, if Miss Sanford were not an heiress. While we—you and I—and others who know him well, will never suspect him of selling himself for money, the above fact may give occasion for scandal-mongers to rave and exult. The father of the bride-elect is in town. I met him on the street to-day with Orrin. Rumor has it that his business here is to purchase the new house opposite Judge Provost's, as a residence for the happy pair. It will be a handsome home, but I hope and believe that we shall be as content with our love-nest of a cottage."

Jessie did not look around as her sister refolded the letter, tucked it into the envelope, and laid it upon the table. But while each believed herself to be separated from the other by a fathomless gulf of memories, every one of which was an anguish, both were pondering the same section of the epistle that lay between them. The announcement of Wyllys' approaching marriage was, in itself, nothing to the wife. The thought of it had lost the power to wound when she parted with her faith in him. The wrong he had done her could never be forgiven; he had misled her purposely; deceived her cruelly; had robbed her life of love and hope, and given her self-contempt and remorse in their stead. But she did not regret him—as she now knew him to be—or linger fondly upon recollections of their by-gone intimacy. Hester Sanford was welcome to the suitor her gold had bought.

The phrases that had found a sentient spot in her breast were these: "Whom I am extremely curious to meet." "I shall expect a full-length description of her." The apathetic misery which had locked brain and heart with fetters of ice since her father's death had not rendered her totally unmindful of her husband's long-suffering and gentleness, his unselfish love and care of herself. She was persuaded that the girlish passion that had made of him a demi-god was gone forever. Her flesh fainted, and her spirit died within her, at the caresses to which she had turned herself in the days of her idolatry, as roses open to the sun—as innocently and as naturally. She could never love again. The fires had scathed too deeply for that; but she had begun to believe that she might find comfort in esteeming and liking her only protector; might seek, and not in vain, in a calm, true friendship for this good man, forgetfulness of the storms that had wrecked her early dreams. In his frank and noble presence suspicion stood rebuked. It was easier to discredit the evidence of one's own senses and judgment, than to doubt his integrity.

But here was a deliberate deception. He—Roy Fordham—had known Hester Sanford before she—Jessie—ever saw her. She was the intimate associate and confidante of his former love;—of the woman he had renounced heartlessly and without compunction,—and whose name had never passed his lips in his wife's hearing. She recalled faithfully Hester's account of the call "Maria" had paid with her then betrothed at Mr. Sanford's house—a statement she would not have dared to make, had it been groundless. Whence this affectation of ignorance, on Fordham's part, of the person and character of his cousin's intended bride, if not as a further means of keeping the knowledge of the affair from her ?

"To whom it should have been told, more than a year ago!" she reflected, a dreary loneliness creeping over her, with the conclusion—"He is like the rest of them! I would have believed in him if I could!"

The door shut quietly. She did not hear it, or miss her sister from her place. It was not an uncommon occurrence for them to sit together without speaking, for an hour at a time, Eunice's fingers busied with some article of useful needlework, Jessie's holding a book which she pretended to read as a cover for her griefful musings. Much less was it in the imagination of the younger sister to follow the elder in her progress up the staircase, her face more stony and eyes more desolate with each step, to the fair, large chamber she had occupied from her childhood.

It was cold and dark, but for the light of the taper she set down upon the mantel. There were none of the fanciful ornaments,—none of the luxurious devices, the patches of bright coloring that reflected the owner's tastes and whims in Jessie's apartment. All the draperies—those of the windows, the dressing-table, and the antique chairs, were pure white, as were also the walls. The carpet was a sober drab, checkered with narrow lines of blue. The aspect of the whole was so chill and grave on this bleak night, that Eunice shivered as at the breath of winter, as she drew up a seat to a stand in the middle of the floor, and leaned her head upon the hard wood. Not a tear or word escaped her, but a deft and an invisible engraver was at work upon her features, sharpening outlines, deepening here a stroke and there a furrow, until the father would not have known his child.

I said, many pages back, that Orrin Wyllys' victims made no moan. Least of them all, was this one likely to publish her case to the world,—to shriek out her great and sudden woe in the ear of heaven and of her kind. She had never loved before she met him, and the discovery of this curious fact had stimulated his professional zeal—animated his pride in the honor and success of his vocation. He had found the key to her heart, and had used it. Love is no holiday romance when it comes thus late in life to a woman of large capacity for affection, and a will, the strength of which has hitherto made the repression of such seeking instincts and needs as win for weaker girls the reputation of lovingness and dependence, appear even to those who know her best like tranquil contentment with her allotted share of love and companionship. She had heard herself called, "a predestined old maid," ever since her mother left her, a demure infant, apt and serious beyond her years—to become her father's co-worker and comforter. Her calm smile at the nickname looked like conscious superiority to dread of the obloquy—a fear that infects all classes of her sex. Her love was as reticent as her longing for affection had been. Orrin's most insidious arts had not sufficed to surprise her into confession. Of marriage he had never spoken, nor she permitted herself to think. Her attachment was artless and uncalculating as a child's. He had convinced her that the subtle sympathy of their souls had made them one from their earliest meeting; that he had then recognized in her his spirit-mate. The seductive cant came trippingly from his tongue with the fluent convincingness of much practice, and she was listening to it for the first time. His dual game was adroitly conducted, and the result was a triumphant cap-sheaf to his harvest of hearts. His bride-expectant would have torn her flaxen hair—natural and artificial—with rage had she guessed how tame he found his pursuit of herself; how deficient in the flavor of excitement that had marked his courtship of the beautiful but fortuneless country girls.

The hall-clock rang out nine strokes when Eunice shook off her reverie, and unlocked a drawer of her bureau. It was lined with silver paper, and the odor of dried violets stole into the still, cold air when she opened it. A bunch of withered flowers; a small herbarium filled by Wyllys and herself in their woodland and mountain rambles,—the vignette on the title-page, from his pencil; all the inscriptions, names of specimens, and poetical legends, penned by his hand; a thin bundle of letters and notes; five or six books—favorite works with both of them—composed the contents. She took them out carefully, one by one, and laid them in a heap upon the table. Then, she sought in the closet for a walnut box, one of her childhood's treasures, an oblong casket with a sliding top and a strong lock. Without audible evidence of suffering, she arranged the relics within it, with the nice regard to neatness and order which was, with her, intuitive as it had become habitual. The last article was a volume of Spenser's "Faerie Queene"—an English edition elegantly illustrated. Wyllys had sent it to her, the Christmas Jessie passed with Mrs. Baxter. His pencillings were upon several pages, and one of the fly-leaves bore an extract from Tennyson. He had apologized for transcribing it, there, in the letter accompanying the gift, by saying that it was ever in his mind, when he watched or talked with her. No eyes save his and hers had ever seen the lines as written upon that page, and they were the more precious to her that this was so.

She unclosed the book and re-read them before consigning it to its place. How vividly arose before her the scene of that Christmas Eve, when the parcel was brought to her! Her father always spent the evening of the twenty-fourth of December in his study—and fasting. It was an anniversary with him; scrupulously observed for many years, of what event or crisis in his life his daughters never knew. Eunice had made her preparations for a lonely evening by her chamber-fire; collected her books and work about her that she might not feel too sadly the want of human converse. But she had touched none of these; was sitting, her head on her hand, gazing into the fire, hearkening to the wind as it flung fierce dashes of sleet against the windows, and longing, how hungrily! for some visible evidence that she was remembered and missed by another, as she thought of and missed him. Into her solitude had come his gift and letter, and the night was all light about her; the world was no more dark and cold and tempestuous. She walked in Paradise, hand in hand with the good genius who had wrought the spell.

The idealistic character of woman's love is at once her blessing and her curse. Orrin Wyllys, at that hour dancing at a Christmas rout, the gayest of the season, looking meaning but unuttered flatteries into other eyes; feigning—as he best could feign—to wait as for the sentence of life and death, upon other "sweet lips," would have laughed in unmixed amusement had he seen, in a magic mirror, the representment of himself before which a pure, fervent soul was laying votive offerings of her best affections and richest fancies;—to which she was looking up as to the highest of human intelligences, the embodiment of manhood's virtues and graces. While to her the delusion was happiness without stain or shade, while it lasted.

It was over now! Returning from the pursuit of these shadows—dearer and fairer than any real joy and positive delight that would ever visit her solitary life,—she let the leaves of the book she still held unfurl slowly under her fingers, reading a line here, a paragraph there, always those marked by the hand that must never meet hers again with the lingering touch which said more than the most impassioned words from other tongues. A blue ribbon was inserted at one place, where a passage was encircled by pencilled brackets, while in the margin was written, "E. K."

Eunice shut her eyes in a throe of memory that ploughed deep pain-lines in her visage. Hell may keep, but earth has not a keener torment than the contemplation of what was once sweetest joy,—now changed into shameful agony.

The book had fallen to the floor and lay still open at the page marked by the ribbon. In picking it up, her eye rested upon another line—unmarked.

At last, in close heart shutting up her pain.

The rest of Eunice Kirke's life was a commentary upon that passage.

The travail of concealment began when she turned the lock upon the mementos—few and innocent—of her only love-dream. Hitherto, it had been a pearl, too priceless and pure to be exposed to other eyes.

Defaced and crushed by one rude blow, it was something to be thrust out of sight, kept beyond the chance of suspicion or detection—buried in a nameless grave.

The key of the casket was a tiny thing, at which she looked for an instant in irresolution that ended in her raising the window, and flinging it far into the garden. The rain would soon beat it into the loose mould. It would be rusted into uselessness before the spring plough-share brought it again to the surface. Upon the lid of the box she fastened a card.

" To be buried with me ," she wrote upon it with fingers that did not tremble.

The grave seems near and welcome in the ague-fit that shakes the soul from the divine illusion of reciprocal affection. There was not a symptom of sickly sentimentalism in Eunice's nature; but she did feel that she could have said farewell to existence and the few she loved, with less effort than was required to dress her countenance in its wonted serenity, and go back to her sister; to speak and act as if a thunderbolt had not riven the ground at her feet; to consult her rustic and unobservant handmaid about homely details of the morrow's housekeeping. Confirmations all of them—of the stubborn fact that the business of life—its tug and sweat and strain, halts not for broken heart-strings.

If the iron be blunt, a man must lay to it more strength. If the spirit refuse to bear its part in the appointed work of the hour, or day, or life, the muscles and brain must be educated to perform double duty. This toiling and reeking at the galley-oar may bring power to the sinews, and hardness to the flesh, but woe to him by whose offence the burden is bound upon the guiltless!

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