--Mr. Blake?" exclaimed she leaping to her feet. "I am sure I
heard his footstep in the hall?"

"He is with your father and brother. It was at his command I came for
you."

A gleam hard to interpret flashed for an instant over her face. With
her eye on the door she towered in her womanly dignity, while thoughts
innumerable seemed to rush in wild succession through her mind.

"Will you not come?" I urged.

"I--," she paused. "I will go see my father," she murmured, "but--"

Suddenly she trembled and drew back; a step was in the hall, on the
threshold, at her side; Mr. Blake had come to reclaim his bride.

"Mr. Blake!"

The word came from her in a low tone shaken with the concentrated
anguish of many a month of longing and despair, but there was no
invitation in its sound, and he who had held out his arms, stopped and
surveying her with a certain deprecatory glance in his proud eye, said,

"You are right; I have first my acknowledgments to make and your
forgiveness to ask before I can hope--"

"No, no," she broke in, "your coming here is enough, I request no more.
If you felt unkindly toward me--"

"Unkindly?" A world of love thrilled in that word. "Luttra, I am your
husband and rejoice that I am so; it is to lay the devotion of my heart
and life at your feet that I seek your presence this hour. The year has
taught me--ah, what has not the year taught me of the worth of her I so
recklessly threw from me on my wedding day. Luttra,"--he held out his
hand--"will you crown all your other acts of devotion with a pardon
that will restore me to my manhood and that place in your esteem which I
covet above every other earthly good?"

Her face which had been raised to his with that earnest look we knew so
well, softened with an ineffable smile, but still she did not lay her
hand in his.

"And you say this to me in the very hour of my father's and brother's
arrest! With the remembrance in your mind of their bound and abject
forms lying before you guarded by police; knowing too, that they deserve
their ignominy and the long imprisonment that awaits them?"

"No, I say it on the day of the discovery and the restoration of that
wife for whom I have long searched, and to whom when found I have no
word to give but welcome, welcome, welcome."

With the same deep smile she bowed her head, "Now let come what will,
I can never again be unhappy," were the words I caught, uttered in the
lowest of undertones. But in another mome