fe had sunk into a chair, she sat staring at it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

A week later, Margaret was out to walk on the barren.

She had walked far, though her step had been slow; it seemed to her that
her step would always be slow now, her effort must be to keep it steady.
She had reached a point where there rose on the green level a little
mound-like island of a different growth, its top covered with
palmetto-trees. She made her way to the summit; though the height of the
little hill was low, the view one obtained there was extensive, like
that from a small light-house in a salt-marsh. Where she stood there was
a cleared space--the ground had been burned over not long before; on
this brown surface the crosiers of new ferns were unrolling themselves,
and when tired of the broad barren, her eyes rested on their little
fresh stalks, green and woolly, though she no longer stooped to gather
them. She did not come home now laden with flowers and vines to plant in
the old East Angels garden; the life she had been trying to build up
there was suddenly stopped, a completely different one was demanding
her. She had been very free, but now she was called back--called back to
the slavery, and the dread.

Oh, blessed, twice blessed, are the women who have no very deep feelings
of any kind! they are so much happier, and so much better! This was what
she was saying to herself over and over again, as, with one arm round a
slender tree, so that she could lean her head against it, she stood
there alone on the little island, looking over the plain. Not to care
very deeply, too deeply, for anything, any one; and with that to be kind
and gentle--this was by far the happiest nature for women to have, and
of such the good were made. Mothers should pray for this disposition
for their daughters. Anything else led to bitter pain.

She thought of her own mother, of whom she had no recollection. "If you
had lived, mother, perhaps I should have been saved from this; perhaps I
should not be so wretched--" this was her silent cry.

She heard a sound, some one was coming through the high bushes below; a
moment more, and the person appeared. It was Evert Winthrop.

"_You?_" she said, breathlessly. "When did you come? How could you know
I was here?"

"For once I've been fortunate, I have never been so before where you
were concerned. I reached East Angels half an hour ago, Celestine said
you were out on the barren somewhere, and Telano happene