recover her health,
but THAT she feared she never should until she was reconciled to her
brother.

Meantime Grace Carden fell into a strange state: fits of feverish
energy; fits of death-like stupor. She could do nothing, yet it maddened
her to be idle. With Bolt's permission, she set workmen to remove all
the remains of the chimney that could be got at--the water was high just
then: she had a barge and workmen, and often watched them, and urged
them by her presence. Not that she ever spoke; but she hovered about
with her marble face and staring eyes, and the sight of her touched
their hearts and spurred them to exertion.

Sometimes she used to stand on a heap of bricks hard by, and peer, with
dilated eyes into the dark stream, and watch each bucket, or basket, as
it came up with bricks, and rubbish, and mud, from the bottom.

At other times she would stand on the bridge and lean over the
battlements so far as if she would fly down and search for her dead
lover.

One day as she hung thus, glaring into the water, she heard a deep sigh.
She looked up, and there was a face almost as pale as her own, and even
more haggard, looking at her with a strange mixture of pain and pity.
This ghastly spectator of her agony was himself a miserable man, it was
Frederick Coventry. His crime had brought him no happiness, no hope of
happiness.

At sight of him Grace Carden groaned, and covered her face with her
hands.

Coventry drew back dismayed. His guilty conscience misinterpreted this.

"You can forgive us now," said Grace, with a deep sob: then turned away
with sullen listlessness, and continued her sad scrutiny.

Coventry loved her, after his fashion, and her mute but eloquent misery
moved him.

He drew nearer to her, and said softly, "Do not look so; I can't bear
it. He is not there."

"Ah! How do you know?"

Coventry was silent for a moment, and seemed uneasy; but at last he
replied thus: "There were two explosions. The chimney fell into the
river a moment before the explosion that blew up the works. So how can
he be buried under the ruins of the chimney? I know this from a workman
who was standing on the bridge when the explosions took place."

"Bless the tongue that tells me that! Oh, how much wiser you are than the
rest of us! Mr. Coventry, pity and forgive a poor girl who has used you
ill. Tell me--tell me--what can have become of him?"

Coventry was much agitated, and could not speak for some time, and
when