before
she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
the aged woman enter and knocked.

Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
that night of their conversation, "Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
long in suspense!" and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
another resounding knock on the door.

The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:

"I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
realize my joy!"

The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
through the woman's aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
enveloped the young girl's shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.

"O what have I done?" cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
There was a gob