for your husband."

Linda stayed a while to think, not pausing that she might answer
her aunt's sophistry, which she hardly noticed, but that she might
consider, if it were possible, what it was that she was about
to do;--that there might be left a moment to her before she had
surrendered herself for ever to her doom. And then she spoke. "Aunt
Charlotte," she said, "if you will get up I will do as you would have
me."

Madame Staubach could not arise at once, as it was incumbent on
her to return thanks for the mercy that had been vouchsafed to her;
but her thanks were quickly rendered, and then she was on the bed,
with Linda in her arms. She had succeeded, and her child was saved.
Perhaps there was something of triumph that the earnestness of her
prayer should have been efficacious. It was a great thing that she
had done, and the Scriptures had proved themselves to be true to her.
She lay for a while fondling her niece and kissing her, as she had
not done for years. "Linda, dear Linda!" She almost promised to the
girl earthly happiness, in spite of her creed as to the necessity
for crushing. For the moment she petted her niece as one weak woman
may pet another. She went down to the kitchen and made coffee for
her,--though she herself was weak from want of food,--and toasted
bread, and brought the food up with a china cup and a china plate, to
show her gratitude to the niece who had been her convert. And yet, as
she did so, she told herself that such gratitude was mean, vile, and
mistaken. It had been the Lord's doing, and not Linda's.

Linda took the coffee and the toast, and tried to make herself
passive in her aunt's hands. She returned Madame Staubach's kisses
and the pressure of her hand, and made some semblance of joy, that
peace should have been re-established between them two. But her heart
was dead within her, and the reflection that this illness might even
yet be an illness unto death was the only one in which she could find
the slightest comfort. She had promised Ludovic that she would never
become the wife of any one but him; and now, at the first trial
of her faith, she had promised to marry Peter Steinmarc. She was
forsworn, and it would hardly be that the Lord would be satisfied
with her, because she had perjured herself! When her aunt left her,
which Madame Staubach did as the dusk came on, she endeavoured to
promise herself that she would never get well. Was not the very
thought that she would have t