I know that you have never heard my account of that hour so eventful to us both; and your father's descriptions of it were always, for me, spoiled by the ridicule he threw upon his own conduct.

You remind me in your last how often I have promised you my own poor description of that event; and, that I may have the less reluctance to revive such memories, you tell me of the sympathy you hear expressed for us whenever allusion is made in your presence to the time when that blot was on our name. You cannot doubt that it is peculiarly gratifying to me to hear this is the case in the country where your father first heard of my imputed crime, and, as soon as honour allowed him, laid down all his bright hopes of glory to hasten to my deliverance and comfort.

I shall trust, my dear boy, that in describing to you that meeting -in laying before you word for word, look for look, thought for thought the vividness of my remembrance shall atone for the unfitness of your mother's pen for such a task. Ah, Will! unfit indeed it is to do anything like honour, even justice, to him who may now no more speak of it, unless he does so to me, as I sometimes love to fancy that he does, in the vague, sweet language of the churchyard flowers; or in the sunshine that sometimes, as I stand beside his grave, breaks over it, seeming to me to come straight from his gallant heart, that still cannot refrain from offering me, from the very dust, some comfort for my tears,

I can feel the very chill that fell on me as I came from my cell into the passage, to go with the matron towards the room where he was waiting. I had but two days before left the infirmary, and my weakness was such as to render me incapable of walking without assistance. My mind was nearly as weak as my body; but the excited state I was in gave me a feeling of almost terrible clearness of judgment, so that I was perfectly certain I should know the truth as to your father's conviction of my innocence or guilt the instant I saw him. The possibility, the danger, of making any mistake did not occur to me. It was nothing to me at that moment whether my innocence should ever be proved to the world, or not. It was nothing to me whether my dreary and sometimes maddening prison-life should drag on to its fullest length, after this meeting. The one and only question that had place within me was, whether my soul was alone in the awful darkness and chaos into which my life by a cruel blunder had been turned, or whether that brightest and bravest of spirits had been with mine from the first, and would be to the end.

I had never once utterly lost faith in his faith in my innocence; but the shock my reliance on friends had received, the suddenness and the cruelly mysterious nature of these sorrows that had come upon me one after another, seemed by that time to have left no feeling in me but one of wild questioning anticipation of what more could come.

You can guess the answer that haunted me as I dragged along my crushed life through the strange dreary days, and the nights more strange and dreary still. You can guess it. faith in me. But I would not accept it.

Your father's loss of If God had sent me the

thought as a gentle warning of what was to come, I told myself He would not be angry with me if I preferred not to take such warnings, but to wait and let myself be utterly crushed by the blow itself, if it

must come.

The matron opened the door and led me into the room.

I saw first the prison-doctor, who had attended me during my two serious illnesses, and who rose as I entered—a mark of respect so new to him towards his prison patients that I looked at him with half-unconscious surprise, lifting my hand to my forehead, and pausing to ask myself of what this might be ominous.

He seemed to remember himself with some confusion; and came forward in his customary manner, to ask me almost sharply if I had taken some mixture he had sent me, and to tell me that, if I was not careful to keep myself quiet through this interview, my visitor would not be allowed to come a second time.

I had kept my eyes upon the doctor's face since entering the room, not looking for that other presence of which, however, I was fully

aware.

The doctor had scarcely ceased speaking to me before I noticed that he drew away a little, rather quickly. The matron let my hand slip from her arm and stood aside too, leaving me to meet your father who was approaching me.

It was then I raised my eyes and looked at him, and saw that it had not pleased God to write His mercy on his face in the manner I had prayed, demanded, felt nearly sure He would; and so I thought that mercy was denied me, and that all which might happen from that moment was of small account indeed. The pale, boyish, sensitive face I knew so well, the gentle impetuous eyes, bright with the heart's brave faith, looked on me no more. I had no power to reason with myself; to think how the first experiences of war, the shock of my sorrow must have told on such a nature-how much in these two years the world, before all smiles for him,'had now taught him of her wrongs and anguish; I could only yield myself to the despair that overcame me at the sight of that brown, thin face with its sunken eyes and newly acquired sternness, through which I then could see none of the old tenderness remaining.

My feeble and overwrought brain told me that all the change I saw had come of sorrow caused by my supposed guilt, not only by my misfortunes.

For a moment something impelled me to stretch out my hands and not suffer him to approach me; but as I did so, I felt my strength so forsaking me that, to keep myself from falling, I was forced to cling

to his, which he held towards me hastily, as he perceived my sudden weakness.

He stood supporting me with his arm, slightly and tremblingly, even as he might have done a stranger who had demanded suddenly his pity and assistance, only that perhaps his arm trembled too much. I think that he said, "Christine!"--but I could not be sure whether it was that, or only a short almost sharp sigh which came from his lips. I think it was my name.

His

For the next moment or two-what an age it seemed to my disappointed and weary heart!--we stood looking down at our coldly linked hands, on which such a history of suffering was written. was so seared and darkened it seemed that instant but snatched from the black reek of battle, and mine lay on it more like a white skeleton leaf than a human hand.

There seemed to me, in that pair of hands alone, subject for endless thought and tears.

At last, with a sort of dull, apathetic curiosity as to his thoughts, I looked up in his face.

The tender pity which I saw there for my cruel fate-not for me, I told myself, but for my cruel fate-was more than I could bear. I turned my gasping mouth against his heart, and let it cry its bitter cry there, not in words, but only with a childish, passionate desire and half faith that its bitterness might penetrate and be in some degree understood at that seat of God's own justice and pity.

Your father no sooner heard my cry than he clasped me to that good heart, and kissed me with a torrent of affectionate words; but as there is no greater unrest to be found than on the heart we love and doubt, I tore myself away in passionate rejection of the love I needed so much-yet needed less than justice-and not a word of that had I caught in what he said, though my misery was all ear as he spoke.

I tore myself away, throwing up my clasped hands and straining vehemently back against his circling arm, while I cried in a voice I scarcely knew as mine

"No, no, no! Leave me! leave me!"

I heard him say—

"Christine! Christine!" with what seemed to me something of the old dear voice; at which I cried in sharper anguish-this time casting my arms about his neck-Leave me! leave me!" Then the room darkened to me. There came a dull din in my ears, and for a moment I lost consciousness.

Partly before I fainted, and partly as I came to my senses, I was aware of the matron and doctor taking me from your father, and busying themselves in trying to restore me. I heard the doctor saying in a whisper

"I told you it should not have been to-day. The slightest excite

ment is too much for her strength yet. I advise you even now, I beg of you, to leave her before she recovers."

Your father answered hurriedly—

"No, I can't do that ;" and then I felt him gently taking the heavy prison shoes from my feet.

When I opened my eyes I was seated in the matron's easy-chair, the doctor standing watching me with much anxiety, the matron holding in her hand the little close-bordered prison cap she had taken from my head.

Your father still knelt at my feet, which he was chafing in his warm hands, while he gazed up at my closely cut hair that the removal of the cap had only just made apparent to him.

I sat very still, taking his surprise-so tender and pained—and his gentle services in proud humility.

At last he evidently became troubled by my conscious stillness and silence, and taking my hands said

"Come, Christine, why so silent? They told me you were too ill for me to come to you to-day. Tiny, darling, were they right?-and have I so shaken you that you will not speak to me?"

"What is there to say?" I asked, voicelessly, and closing my eyes in profound weariness. "I know of nothing."

There was more than sadness in his silence. I could feel there was alarm before I heard him mutter to the doctor hastily,

"Yes; she is worse than I dreamt of. What would I give if I had but waited!"

"And why?" I asked, rousing myself with a struggle and leaning forward to gaze into his face as he knelt at my knees looking at me, forgetful of everything but my weak and strange state, "why would you have waited. Why is it not better over?"

"Over!" he repeated. "Christine! what is it that you say? Is

not what better over?"

"This that we both suffer at meeting," I answered. "It would have been better had you not come-but

"Better I had not come? Christine!"

-"But as from kindness to me, or," I added, retaining his hand, which he was about to draw away in surprise," or perhaps in kindness to yourself-mistaken kindness to us both-you have come; do not— let me beg of you-make it too-painful-for us both-by-by prolonging this."

Your father glanced from my face to the doctor's in passionate inquiry.

"Have you deceived me?" he asked; "has she been worse than you have said? Christine! my darling! do you not know me?"

I laid my trembling hands as assuringly as I could upon his shoulder.

"Yes," I answered; "I do. I am not delirious. I have been so

twice since I came here, but now I am calm and sensible of what is passing. Do you not believe it?"

"I do," he said in a changed voice; "and then, Christine, what else must I believe? That you are cold to me? In Heaven's name, why? What have I not done that I could do for your sake? And yet what wonder you should blame me and all the world for helplessness? Have you blamed me much, Christine? You shall yet learn if you have had true cause for that."

There was something in his voice just then, and in the return of the familiar smile to his lips and eyes, that made me suddenly wonder how I could have thought the face after all so very greatly changed. I began, as I gazed wistfully into it, to ask myself if, had I seen it thus when I entered the room, I should have been so sure that your father was not, after all, the very same to me.

After this thought, a hope more faint, yet sweeter than any words can express, made me stretch my hands out to your father and exclaim,

"Oh! that it might have been! Oh, William! that it might have been!"

"Tiny, my darling!" he answered; that what might have been?" "What I always thought would be-that you would know-not only hope or think, but know."

"Know what, Christine?"

"How wrong, how cruel, how wicked all this is to me. insane!"

How

"Well, and is it possible my wife thinks I do not know this?" Taking my face in his hands he looked steadily, joyfully into it. How had the change come? How was I rendered unable to answer? I had indeed thought so. All I could do was to sob out like a child sobbing over past pain.

"Then why were you so different, so strange, so silent and reserved? Ah! it must have been at first sight of me. My hair-my dress-they have made me look what they take me for, is that it? Ah! have I not had enough to bear to make me doubt everythingto make me think even God did not see I was innocent? and that even my little child being dumb could not tell Him how precious its little life was to me. So precious that rather than you should look slightingly upon it I have said, it is true, I trusted rather than that should be He might take it to Himself before you saw it. Ask yourself, William, have I not had enough to make me fear the worst? I had thought you like the rest of the world since you came in here, and have fearfully suffered."

I cannot describe to you your father's amazement and most tender remorse as he understood what I had been thinking and feeling.

"Have I been so cruel a blunderer, Tiny?" he said, after his eyes had filled my soul with peace. "It was not my fault; but they so