n image,
for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed with delight; and now she
could have wept to see the ambition falsified. But the gods had
pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.

She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts.
There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate
of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and
disloyalty to either side. Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and
now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the youth on his
knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and
received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper
raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a
brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name--a deadly
ingredient--and that "didna ken her ain mind an' was as black's your
hat." Now she trembled lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the
idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning
loyalty to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the
credit of the Elliotts. And again she had a vision of herself, the day
over for her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her
last link with life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she
saw but the blank butt-end where she must crawl to die. Had she then
come to the lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as
a girl's and strong as womanhood? It could not be, and yet it was so;
and for a moment her bed was horrible to her as the sides of the grave.
And she looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to
rage, and tremble, and be softened, and rage again, until the day came
and the labours of the day must be renewed.

Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs--his feet, and soon after the
sound of a window-sash flung open. She sat up with her heart beating. He
had gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed. She might again
have one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a change
came over her mind; with the approach of this hope of pleasure, all the
baser metal became immediately obliterated from her thoughts. She rose,
all woman, and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating the wrong,
loyal to her own sex--and all the weakest of that dear miscellany,
nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering,
hopes that she would have died sooner than