resh hopes of bloom into every
sleeping rose. Life incarnate knocked at the wintry tomb; eager,
unseen hands were rolling away the stone. The tide of the year was
rising, soon to break into the wonder of green boughs and violets,
shimmering wings and singing winds.

The cold hand that clutched her heart took a firmer hold. With acute
self-pity, she perceived her isolation. Of all the world, she alone
was set apart; branded, scarred, locked in a prison house that had no
door. The one release was denied her until she could get away.

Poverty had driven her back. Circumstances outside her control had
pushed her through the door she had thought never to enter again.
Through all the five-and-twenty years, she had thought of the house
with a shudder, peopling it with a thousand terrors, not knowing that
there was no terror save her own fear.

Sorrow had put its chains upon her suddenly, at a time when she had not
the strength to break the bond. At first she had struggled; then
ceased. Since then, her faculties had been in suspense, as it were.
She had forgotten laughter, veiled herself from joy, and walked hand in
hand with the grisly phantom of her own conjuring.

Behind the shelter of her veil she had mutely prayed for peace--she
dared not ask for more. And peace had never come. Her crowning
humiliation would be to meet Anthony Dexter face to face--to know him,
and to have him know her. Not knowing where he was, she had travelled
far to avoid him. Now, seeking the last refuge, the one place on earth
where he could not be, she found herself separated from him by less
than a mile. More than that, she had gone to his house, as she had
gone on the fateful day a quarter of a century ago. She had taken back
the pearls, and had not died in doing it. Strangely enough, it had
given her a vague relief.

Miss Evelina's mind had paused at twenty; she had not grown. The acute
suffering of Youth was still upon her, a woman of forty-five. It was
as though a clock had gone on ticking and the hands had never moved;
the dial of her being was held at that dread hour, while her broken
heart beat on.

She had not discovered that secret compensation which clings to the
commonest affairs of life. One sees before him a mountain of toil, an
apparently endless drudgery from which there is no escape. Having once
begun it, an interest appears unexpectedly; new forces ally themselves
with the fumbling hands. Misfortunes come,