Miss Braithwaite, in the deep snow, could not know anything of my misfortune; indeed, no one did who had not been told the previous night. There was fish of some kind on the table, I think, for fingerglasses stood about. I began to untie the flowers and put them into my glass; and as I did it slowly and wearily, I observed Mrs. Henfrey's astonishment, and said to her, "I do not see why these must fade and die, because I am not to be happy;" whereupon both she and Liz gave way to tears and sobs, and I looked at them and longed in vain to follow their example.

I recollect little of that morning. About eleven o'clock the old craving for work came upon me, and I sat between Liz and Mrs. Henfrey, silent and quite unable to shed a tear. Giles then came in and asked if I thought there was anything that would do me good, and I said yes, I wished to go out and walk in the shrubbery. He went away to have a path swept, and when it was ready he took me out. There was a cold north walk behind the trees, which was bare of snow, and there I began mechanically to walk up and down. The inability to shed tears was telling on me. I felt a burning pain in my brow; but I longed for exertion and bodily fatigue, and could not talk, or bear him to talk to me.

When he found that, he let me walk alone, standing near and sometimes watching me. The driving wind was bitterly cold, and the chill earth made my feet numb; but the mechanical exertion of walking seemed to be a relief to me, and I paced up and down in spite of his expostulations.

Close to this walk, but facing south, was a little cottage consisting only of one room. Sometimes we had used it for our photographs; but it was fitted up for a study, and Giles often wrote in it. I now, as I walked, saw him drag wood into it, and then fetch some cushions from the house. I thought it was that he might sit there till I was ready to go in, but instead of that he lingered near, and I continued to walk till I was chilled to my very bones.

At last he confronted me in the path, saying, "You must not stop here any longer."

I was too weak to contend, and he took me by the hand and led me till we had emerged from the dull, dark shrubbery, and were facing the little cottage. He brought me in, and I saw a great fire of wood on the andirons; a basket-work couch stood close to it, which was filled with the cushions that he had brought from the house.

The sun was streaming through the stained glass windows, and all the place was cheerful, and light, and warm. But I heard the wind moaning outside, and longed to be out in it, walking in the dark shrubbery; for sitting thus deprived of movement, and yet not able to shed tears, I began to feel as if all power of endurance was over. And yet this misery did not rouse me to any energy; it was very

feebly that I complained to him while my limbs trembled, and my head swam

"Oh, it is much worse for me indoors! why did you bring me here?"

"I brought you that you might speak. You are breaking your heart in this silence. Complain to me, and say what you please that is bitter, either of Valentine or of me."

"You are good to me now: I have no complaint against you."
"Oh yes, you have."

"I did not know it. I don't care about it."

"And against him?"

"If I must talk of him, I will justify him."

"Oh, have pity on me! It is as I thought. You could not excuse, if you Idid not love him. Oh the disgrace, the misery of it!" He spoke huskily, but struggled with himself; and presently returned to the charge, saying, "Don't turn away your face; give this trouble words."

"I can't. You don't understand."

"Don't I?" he answered, and sighed; "tell me, then, and make me understand."

His sympathy was so keen that, for the moment, it drew me out of myself: I experienced a sharp pang of pity for him, for I saw he was suffering from the sense of disgrace that Valentine had brought on him. So I tried to tell him that I had not been utterly unprepared for this; and with that a burst of tears came to my relief, and I felt that the comforting warmth and sunshine were thawing my numb limbs, and that my heart, for all its aching, was less oppressed.

"There," he said, putting some cushions about me that I might rest on them, "let us reckon over the things that are lost, and consider whether any of them can possibly be supplied. If Valentine had been your true and faithful lover, and had been taken from you by death yesterday, would that have been a greater misfortune than it is to find him weak and dishonourable?"

"It would have been a deeper sorrow; but then I should have felt that he had once been mine: now he has taken himself away even from the past; he has robbed me not only of his affection, but of my own faith, my own idea. Oh, he is gone! and it breaks my heart to think of what he must have suffered before he could have behaved in this way. You ought to have brought him home."

"Brought him home-brought him here?" exclaimed St. George as if in amazement.

"For then at least we should have known what he was about. I

am tormented by the thought of his suspense. What is he doing, do

you think?"

"I don't know," he answered bitterly; "perhaps longing for the

letter that he expects from you-the letter which, it seems, since 'love covers a multitude of sins,' will, without any reproaches or resentment, give him all he wants-his release."

I wrung my hands and wept while he spoke, and then covered my face with them. The forlornness of my position seemed to press upon me at that moment unbearably my maid was sent away, my uncle was at sea; where should I go? what should I do? I had no relations, no friends, no home.

"Don't, oh don't! I cannot bear it," I said, when he added more about Valentine: "he shall have the letter at once, and it shall be what he wishes. It will make me ten times more unhappy to think that he is miserable too. Don't talk to me any more."

He went to the window when I said this; and I shivered in spite of the glowing wood fire, and longed to get away from him and from everyone, and after this short rest to go out and pace again along the frozen paths. I had risen, and drawing my cloak about me had reached the door, when, rousing himself from his reverie, he laid his hand on the latch, and said with a kind of reproachful pleading, "Dorothea!"

"I want to go out and walk," I entreated piteously.

"You are trembling; you are faint. I will take you back to the house, if you please; but you must not walk in that bitter wind again--I dare not allow it."

So restrained, I lost all self-command, and threw myself on the couch sobbing. He would not let me go and walk, that was clear, though I begged and entreated like a child.

He held my hand, and reasoned with me almost with a woman's patience. "Oh!" I exclaimed when I had tried to rise and found I could not, "if you will not let me walk, pray for me."

During the last sleep I had fallen into, I had dreamed of the raft; we stood upon it in the night, he and I, and I knew of Valentine's desertion, and begged him then to pray to God for me. My dream went on to show that he asked what he should pray for, and I had replied, "that God would make me contented, and make Valentine happier without me than we had hoped to be together."

It was with this recollection in my mind that I repeated the request of my dream, and it was certainly the last thing that could enter my head to suppose that he would refuse it.

"To pray for you?" he repeated; "what, aloud? Oh, I cannot do that. Hasn't there been enough of this?" Then when I looked up at him with feeble wonder, he begged me to forgive him, and repeated in a choking voice that this was a thing he could not do.

"I did not want you to pray that the marriage might come on again," I replied; and when he made no answer, I went on, "and if I had, I always thought you wished it to be, though none of the others did."

"None of the others did?” he repeated, as if shocked.

"No," I said, "none of them. I told Mrs. Henfrey so last night. Nothing matters very much now, and I have had time enough since I came here to be sure that, if they had wished it, they would have said so, and the absent ones would have sent kind messages.Emily and Louisa have never so much as sent their love to me. Not one of them has been kind. So perhaps, on the whole, this is just as

well."

"If you say that I have not been kind-," he began, and stopped short.

"No-I do not say so; besides, you told me that I had something to forgive you for."

"Yes."

"I cannot listen to what it was; I do not care.

But it reminded

me of what I have felt, believed, and said about you. I remembered it in the night. If you only knew it all, how displeased you would be-and I suppose

"Yes-try to tell me about this."

I

"I meant to do; but everything is such a long way off. suppose we can never be friends unless I tell you about this. I wish I could; it was so unjust, and besides it was absurd."

My thoughts were getting dim by this time, and I heard and saw everything as if it was taking place in some other world. "It was a pity," I remember saying when I saw him come up to me, "and it scems that it was all my own mistake."

Should he forgive me? he inquired.

"Oh yes," I answered; "and let us be friends."

But if a man forgives on his knees, with a face of passionate entreaty, it is likely to confuse the person forgiven, especially if there is alarm in his face.

I looked down at him, and said, "I am not ill. Why are you afraid?" Agitation made his voice falter, and I did not hear his answer; but I went on, "You don't understand; it is you that are to forgive-you."

It seemed to me that, far away, some one said, Yes, he knew that. Would I let him kiss my hand, then?

I believe I said," There is no need ; and, besides, I have got my glove on." I remember that I lifted up my hand then, and considered that I could not have taken off that glove, however much I might have triod. Then I observed that he had risen, that he was standing before the fire, and that he told me I had not really forgiven him. But I was too utterly weary to contradict him; indeed, I had begun to feel that I did not much care whether we were friends or not. Then, after a time, I noticed that he put some of the cushions against the high end of the basket-work couch; I leaned my cheek against them, and he untied the ribbons of my cloak and hat.

Oh! I thought, how delightful it would be if I could sleep! and then there came a moment of conscious delightful rest, and then I fell into a doze, and next into a dream.

It was the only dream I ever had that realities often brought to my mind in after-years; not that any of its details were repeated correctly, but things often occur which remind me of it, and I have believed in pre-visions ever since.

I was walking in a wood, by the margin of a stream hardly three feet wide. A little child was holding me by the hand, and in its other hand and under the arm was tucked a straggling posy of long daisy asters and tall willow herbs; and it was singing all the while, for its own delight, in the sweetest small voice ever heard.

I saw some one standing on a rise, budding a tree. I perceived directly who it was, and said, with all the composure and indifference of sleep, "Dear me, that is Valentine, and no doubt I have married him after all." Then I looked about for ferns, for I understood that this was a New Zealand wood, but I only noticed clumps of primroses, the skeletons of poplar leaves, and there was watercress in the stream.

I observed a familiar look, and said, "I did not think the two ends of the world were so much alike;" and I suddenly became aware that a little blue smoke, which was sifting through the branches of a cedar tree on the opposite side of the stream, came from the chimneys of Mr. Mortimer's house; and, without surprise, I saw St. George coming down to meet me. We approached a flat plank which served as a bridge. He set his foot upon it to ascertain whether it was safe, held out his hand to my little charge, and between us we guided her

over.

Then I thought he snatched her up in his arms and kissed the small singing mouth with a rapture of passionate love. "Oh!" I said to him with a sudden unsatisfied longing in my heart, "I love that little creature too." But as he held her face to meet mine, I felt, as one sometimes does in a dream, that I was too late; my arms would not take her, my lips could not reach her, and, in another instant, I knew this was only a sleep, and that all of it was melting away.

I got myself awake with a strange yearning at heart. I remembered that I did not have that baby's kiss, and sighed for it before I remembered my own troubles; but there was whispering in the room. How seldom one hears people whisper : it is the strangest, the most exciting, and the most suggestive sound in the world.

I opened my eyes, saw Mr. Brandon sitting on the floor mending the fire with fresh wood, and leaning over him, with her hand on his shoulder, was a lady. I saw some furs lying on the floor, I heard the crackling of the wood; but as he sat with his back to me, looking up at her while she listened intently, not a word of the whisper that floated from one of them to the other was audible to me, till, as he