in gray, whose eager white
face was turned to meet his, in breathless and mute expectancy.

The lingering twilight held at bay slowly marching night; the sunset
glory streamed up almost to the zenith in bands of amethyst and faint
opaline green, like the far reaching plumes of an archangel's pinions
beating the still, crystal air. Later, the vivid orange of the
afterglow burned with a transient splendor, as the dying smile of a day
that had gone to its eternal grave; and all the West was one vast
evening primrose of palest gold sprinkled with star dust, when Beryl
went slowly to join the figure pacing restlessly in front of the gate.

Across the grassy lawn he came to meet her. In mute surrender she
lifted her arms, laid her proud head, with its bared wealth of
burnished bronze hair, down on his shoulder, and wept passionately.

When he had placed her in the carriage, and held her close to his
heart, with his dark cheek resting on hers, where tears still trickled,
he whispered:

"How much are you willing to tell me?"

"Only that I must start at once on a long, lonely journey to a desolate
retreat, in mountain solitudes; far away in the wilderness of the
Northwest. Bertie is there; and I must see him once more."

"How soon do you wish to start?"

"Within the next three days."

"You must wait one week. I cannot go before that time."

"You--?"

"Do you suppose I shall allow you to travel there without me? Do you
imagine I shall ever lose sight of you, till the vows are uttered that
make you my wife? You cannot see your brother's face, until you have
first looked into your husband's. In one week I can arrange to go, to
the ends of the earth if you will; but you will meet your brother only
when you are Beryl Dunbar."

"No--no! You forget, ah!--You forget. I have worn the penitentiary
homespun, and the brand of the convict seared my fair name, scarred all
my life. The wounds will heal, but time can never efface the hard lines
of the cicatrice; and I could not bear to mar the lustre of your
honored name by--"

"Hush!--hush. It is ungenerous in you to wound me so sorely. When I
remember the fiery furnace through which my wife walked unscorched,
with such sublime and patient heroism, is it possible that I should
forget whose rash hand, whose besotted idiocy consigned her to the
awful ordeal? Out of the black shadow where I thrust you, sprang the
halo that glorifies you. How often, in the silence of my sleepless
n