and left the world in
shadow.

"God in Heaven, I thank Thee! He lives; my beloved one, we shall be
restored to each other!" repeated the girl in an ecstacy of gladness;
and her dark-blue eyes clung rapturously to the handsome face, wondering
at its pallor and strange, intent look.

"Dear Love, how pale and thin and sad he looks! He has been ill,
perhaps, or it is grief for me that has changed him so! It is strange
that he never found me when I was such a short distance away; but there
are many mysteries to be unraveled yet," she murmured, rising to her
feet, and going in haste to a side entrance, where she could easily gain
the upper portion of the house without being detected.

As she mounted the stairs, she was thinking so gladly of the joyful
reunion with Love, that she did not observe, until they were face to
face, a lady coming out of his room. It was Mrs. Ellsworth; and as she
met the pale, trembling girl gliding like a shadow in the semi-darkness
of the corridor, a long, loud, wailing cry burst from her startled lips,
and making an effort to fly from what she took for a veritable ghost,
she tripped, and fell prostrate to the floor.

Dainty saw her cruel aunt distinctly, heard the startled cry and the
fall; but she never looked back, but ran eagerly to her darling's room.

She tore open the door, and rushed over the threshold, across the room,
with outstretched arms.

"Oh, my love, my darling!"

Her young husband was sitting at the window in an easy-chair, with a
velvet dressing-gown wrapped about him, and at the sound of her
entrance, he turned his face around, and looked at the intruder blankly.

Blankly!--that was the only word that described it.

If Dainty had been the greatest stranger in the world, her young
husband could not have turned upon her lovely, agitated face a more
calm, unrecognizing stare.

For a moment she stopped, and regarded him pitifully, sobbing:

"Oh, Love! am I so changed you do not know your own little Dainty, your
wife? Oh, look at me closely! I have been ill, and lost my beauty for a
little while. They had to cut my hair, but, dearest, it will soon grow
again as pretty as ever!"

She moved closer, and timidly clasped her arms about his neck.

"Oh, my darling! do not look at me as if I were a stranger! Oh, do not!
That cold, stony stare almost breaks my heart! Oh, Love! it is your own
little Dainty! I was stolen away from you, and oh! I have passed through
such a terribl