arm thanks for this scrap of information.
So long as Griffith remained in the island there was always a hope he
might return to her. The money he had taken would soon be exhausted; and
poverty might drive him to her; and she was so far humbled by grief,
that she could welcome him even on those terms.

Affliction tempers the proud. Mrs. Gaunt was deeply injured as well as
insulted; but, for all that, in her many days and weeks of solitude and
sorrow, she took herself to task, and saw her fault. She became more
gentle, more considerate of her servants' feelings, more womanly.

For many months she could not enter "the Grove." The spirited woman's
very flesh revolted at the sight of the place where she had been
insulted and abandoned. But, as she went deeper in religion, she forced
herself to go to the gate and look in, and say out loud, "I gave the
first offence," and then she would go in-doors again, quivering with
the internal conflict.

Finally, being a Catholic, and therefore attaching more value to
self-torture than we do, the poor soul made this very grove her place of
penance. Once a week she had the fortitude to drag herself to the very
spot where Griffith had denounced her; and there she would kneel and
pray for him and for herself. And certainly, if humility and
self-abasement were qualities of the body, here was to be seen their
picture; for her way was to set her crucifix up at the foot of a tree;
then to bow herself all down, between kneeling and lying, and put her
lips meekly to the foot of the crucifix, and so pray long and earnestly.

Now, one day, while she was thus crouching in prayer, a gentleman,
booted and spurred and splashed, drew near, with hesitating steps. She
was so absorbed, she did not hear those steps at all till they were very
near; but then she trembled all over; for her delicate ear recognized a
manly tread she had not heard for many a day. She dared not move nor
look, for she thought it was a mere sound, sent to her by Heaven to
comfort her.

But the next moment a well-known mellow voice came like a thunder-clap,
it shook her so.

"Forgive me, my good dame, but I desire to know--"

The question went no further, for Kate Gaunt sprang to her feet, with a
loud scream, and stood glaring at Griffith Gaunt, and he at her.

And thus husband and wife met again,--met, by some strange caprice of
Destiny, on the very spot where they had parted so horribly.

CHAPTER XXXI.

The gaze these