that evening--you
remember--we sat beside the children's empty beds, and she told me
some of her thoughts. When the lighting flashed, her nerves gave way,
and she cried out, in her pain, 'Did he forgive?' That was her one
thought. Her husband,--who was up in heaven with the children,--did he
think mercifully of her, and know how she loved him? It was your name
that was on her lips when that good woman, Miss Mewlstone, hushed her
in her arms like a child. Oh, be comforted!" faltered Phillis, "for
she loves you, and mourns for you as though she were the most desolate
creature living!" But here she paused, for something that sounded like
a sob came to her ear, and looking round, she saw the bowed figure of
her companion shaking with uncontrollable emotion,--those hard
tearless sobs that are only wrung from a man's strong agony.

"Oh, hush!" cried the girl, tenderly. "Be comforted: there is no room
for doubt. There! I will leave you; you will be better by and by." And
then instinctively she turned away her face from a grief too sacred
for a stranger to touch, and walked down to the water, where the
children had ceased playing, and listened to the baby waves that
lapped about her feet.

And by and by he joined her; and on his pale face there was a rapt,
serious look, as of one who has despaired and has just listened to an
angel's tidings.

"Did I not say that you, and only you, could help me? This is what I
have wanted to know: had Magdalene forgiven me? Now I need wait no
longer. My wife and home are mine, and I must take possession of my
treasures."

He stopped, as though overcome by the prospect of such happiness; but
Phillis timidly interposed:

"But, Mr. Cheyne, think a moment. How is it to be managed? If you are
in too great a hurry, will not the shock be too much for her? She is
nervous,--excitable. It would hardly be safe."

"That is what troubles me," he returned, anxiously. "It is too much
for any woman to bear; and Magdalene--she was always excitable. Tell
me, you have such good sense; and, though you are so young, one can
always rely on a woman; you understand her so well--I see you do--and
she is fond of you,--how shall we act that my poor darling, who has
undergone so much, may not be harmed by me any more?"

"Wait one moment," returned Phillis, earnestly. "I must consider." And
she set herself to revolve all manner of possibilities, and then
rejected them one by one. "There seems no other way," she o