its rest at last.

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Treherne's Forgiveness.

Mrs. Treherne was sitting in the drawing-room of her London
house. The window was open to the hot dusty street, long
shadows lay upon the deserted pavement, the opposite houses
were all closed, and no sound disturbed the stillness of the
September evening but the shouts of the children, as they
played up and down the steps, and under the porticoes of the
houses, and the bells of the Westminster clocks chiming one
quarter after another. Through the half-drawn curtains that
hung between the two drawing-rooms she could see Graham and
Madelon sitting together, looking out upon the Park, as they
talked in low tones, and a sudden sadness filled her heart.
They were to be married next week, and go abroad at once,
whilst she returned to Cornwall; and the even current of a
lonely life, that had been stirred and altered in its course
five years ago, would return to its original channel, to be
disturbed, perhaps, no more.

It was of these five years that Mrs. Treherne was thinking
now, and of others, perhaps, beyond them again, when she too
had been young, and beloved, and happy. There are some lives
which, in their even tenour of mild happiness, seem to glide
smoothly from one scattered sorrow to another, so that to the
very end some of the hopefulness and buoyancy of youth are
retained; but there are others in which are concentrated in
one brief space those keen joys and keener sorrows that no one
quite survives, which, in passing over us take from us our
strongest vitality, our young capacity for happiness and
suffering alike. Such a life had been Mrs. Treherne's. She had
been a woman of deep affections and passions, and they all lay
buried in those early years that had taken from her husband,
and children, and friend, and it was only a dim shadow of her
former self that moved, and spoke, and lived in these latter
days.

It was an old story with her now, however. She did not envy
these two happy people who were talking together in the next
room. It was of Madelon she was thinking most, thinking sadly
enough that in all these years she had not been able to win
the girl's heart. When she had first seen the child of the
friend who in all the world had been most dear to her, she had
promised herself that, for Magdalen's sake, she would take her
home and bring her up as her own daughter; and she had kept
her promise, but she had failed in making her happy.