he resuscitated Avice.

He had chosen this moment for his outlook through knowing that the
villagers were in no hurry to pull down their blinds at nightfall.
And, as he had divined, the inside of the young woman's living-room was
visible to him as formerly, illuminated by the rays of its own lamp.

A subdued thumping came every now and then from the apartment. She was
ironing linen on a flannel table-cloth, a row of such apparel hanging on
a clothes-horse by the fire. Her face had been pale when he encountered
her, but now it was warm and pink with her exertions and the heat of the
stove. Yet it was in perfect and passionless repose, which imparted a
Minerva cast to the profile. When she glanced up, her lineaments seemed
to have all the soul and heart that had characterized her mother's,
and had been with her a true index of the spirit within. Could it be
possible that in this case the manifestation was fictitious? He had met
with many such examples of hereditary persistence without the qualities
signified by the traits. He unconsciously hoped that it was at least not
entirely so here.

The room was less furnished than when he had last beheld it. The
'bo-fet,' or double corner-cupboard, where the china was formerly kept,
had disappeared, its place being taken by a plain board. The tall old
clock, with its ancient oak carcase, arched brow, and humorous mouth,
was also not to be seen, a cheap, white-dialled specimen doing its work.
What these displacements might betoken saddened his humanity less than
it cheered his primitive instinct in pointing out how her necessities
might bring them together.

Having fixed his residence near her for some lengthy time he felt in
no hurry to obtrude his presence just now, and went indoors. That this
girl's frame was doomed to be a real embodiment of that olden seductive
one--that Protean dream-creature, who had never seen fit to irradiate
the mother's image till it became a mere memory after dissolution--he
doubted less every moment.

There was an uneasiness in recognizing such. There was something
abnormal in his present proclivity. A certain sanity had, after all,
accompanied his former idealizing passions: the Beloved had seldom
informed a personality which, while enrapturing his soul, simultaneously
shocked his intellect. A change, perhaps, had come.

It was a fine morning on the morrow. Walking in the grounds towards
the gate he saw Avice entering his hired castle with a broa