e office of woman? She had laid aside the bracelet
which she had so long worn as a kind of charm as well as an ornament.
One would have said her features had lost something of that look of
imperious beauty which had added to her resemblance to the dead woman
whose glowing portrait hung upon her wall. And if it could be that,
after so many generations, the blood of her who had died for her faith
could show in her descendants veins, and the soul of that elect lady
of her race look out from her far-removed offspring's dark eyes, such a
transfusion of the martyr's life and spiritual being might well seem to
manifest itself in Myrtle Hazard.

The large-hearted old man forgot his scholastic theory of human nature
as he looked upon her face. He thought he saw in her the dawning of
that grace which some are born with; which some, like Myrtle, only reach
through many trials and dangers; which some seem to show for a while
and then lose; which too many never reach while they wear the robes of
earth, but which speaks of the kingdom of heaven already begun in
the heart of a child of earth. He told her simply the story of the
occurrences which had brought them together in the old house, with the
message the lawyer was to deliver to its inmates. He wished to prepare
her for what might have been too sudden a surprise.

But Myrtle was not wholly unprepared for some such revelation. There was
little danger that any such announcement would throw her mind from its
balance after the inward conflict through which she had been passing.
For her lover had left her almost as soon as he had told her the story
of his passion, and the relation in which he stood to her. He, too, had
gone to answer his country's call to her children, not driven away by
crime and shame and despair, but quitting all--his new-born happiness,
the art in which he was an enthusiast, his prospects of success and
honor--to obey the higher command of duty. War was to him, as to so many
of the noble youth who went forth, only organized barbarism, hateful but
for the sacred cause which alone redeemed it from the curse that blasted
the first murderer. God only knew the sacrifice such young men as he
made.

How brief Myrtle's dream had been! She almost doubted, at some moments,
whether she would not awake from it, as from her other visions, and find
it all unreal. There was no need of fearing any undue excitement of her
mind after the alternations of feeling she had just exper