tace, my darling, my first and only love!" murmured the stricken
creature, lying face to the very floor in the agony of her grief. "Come
to me from the shadowy spirit land! O God, send him to me, that I may
look upon him once more!"

The shadows deepened within the room. Raising her head she gazed
around, and the expression of pitiable eagerness on the white drawn face
was fearful to behold.

"Oh, dear Lord, if our love is so wicked are we not punished enough! O
God, show him to me again if but for a moment! The ghastliest terrors
of the grave are sweetness to me, if I may but see him once--my dear
dead love! Eustace, Eustace! You cannot come to me, but I shall soon
go to you! Is it a loving God or a fiend that tortures us so? Ah-ah!"

Her heart-broken paroxysm could go no further. No apparition from
another world met her eyes as they strove to penetrate the deepening
shadows as though fully expecting one. The exhaustion that supervened
was beneficial to a degree, in that it acted as a safety valve to her
fearfully overwrought brain. Her very mind was in danger.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For nearly a fortnight has Eanswyth thus dwelt, and so far from
beginning to tire of her solitude, she hugs it closer to her. She has
received visits from the Hostes and other friends who, reckoning that a
couple of days of solitude would sicken her of it altogether, had come
with the object of inducing her to return to the settlement. Besides,
Christmas was close at hand and, her bereavement notwithstanding, it did
not somehow seem good that she should spend that genial season alone and
in a position not altogether free from danger. But their kindly efforts
proved futile; indeed, Eanswyth could hardly disguise the fact that
their visits were unwelcome. She preferred solitude at such a time, she
said. Then Mrs Hoste had undertaken to lecture her. It could not be
right to abandon one's self so entirely, even to a great sorrow, purred
that complacent matron. It seemed somehow to argue a want of Christian
resignation. It was all very well up to a certain point, of course; but
beyond that, it looked like flying in the face of Providence. And
Eanswyth had turned her great eyes with such a blank and bewildered look
upon the speaker's face, as if wondering what on earth the woman could
be talking about, that Mrs Hoste, good-hearted though shallow, had
dropped her role of