you
remember a few years later, when your own sweet mother died, how he came
to comfort you and filled your lap with flowers?"

Yes, Beth remembered it all, and the tears were running down her cheeks
as she drooped her head in silence. The door-bell broke the stillness
just then. Dr. Woodburn was wanted. Bidding Beth a hasty but tender
good-bye, he hurried off at the call of duty. Beth sat gazing at the
coal-fire in silence after her father left. Poor dear old father! What
a touching story it was! He must have suffered so, and yet he had buried
his sorrow and gone about his work with smiling face. Brave, heroic
soul! Beth fell to picturing it all over again with that brilliant
imagination of hers, until she seemed to see the tall woman, with her
beautiful dark eyes and hair, coming down the stairs, just as he had
seen her. She seemed to hear the March winds moan as he stepped out into
the night and left the beautiful young wife, pale in death. Then she
went to the window and looked out at the stars in the clear sky, and the
meadow tinged with the first frost of autumn; and the pine-wood to the
north, with the moon hanging like a crescent of silver above it. It was
there, at that window, Arthur had asked her to be his wife. Poor Arthur!
She was glad her father did not know. It would have pained him to think
she had refused the son of the woman he had loved.

Beth lingered a little, gazing at the clear frosty scene before her,
then rose with a firm look on her face and went up to her room. There
was one thing more to be done before she left home to-morrow. She had
resolved upon it. It was dark in her room, but she needed no light to
recognize that roll of manuscript in her drawer. She hesitated a moment
as she touched it tenderly. Must she do it? Yes, ah, yes! She could not
publish that story now. Just then the picture of Arthur seemed to flash
through her mind, reading it and tossing it down with that cold, silent
look she had sometimes seen on his face. It was dark in the hall as she
carried it down to the drawing-room grate. She crouched down on the
hearth-rug before the coals, and a moment later the flames that played
among the closely-written sheets lighted her face. Nothing but a
blackened parchment now for all that proud dream of fame! The room grew
dark again, and only the coals cracking and snapping, and the steady
ticking of the old clock on the mantel piece above her head, broke the
stillness. It was done. She