girl took, as she grew up, in all that
concerned her ancestress, and especially the tragic story of the
supposed death of the lover, whose wife she expected to be, in the
conflagration of his house. It was a tale well calculated to touch the
sympathy of a romantic girl, and the fact that the blood of the
unfortunate heroine was in her own veins naturally heightened Edith's
interest in it. A portrait of Edith Bartlett and some of her papers,
including a packet of my own letters, were among the family heirlooms.
The picture represented a very beautiful young woman about whom it was
easy to imagine all manner of tender and romantic things. My letters
gave Edith some material for forming a distinct idea of my
personality, and both together sufficed to make the sad old story very
real to her. She used to tell her parents, half jestingly, that she
would never marry till she found a lover like Julian West, and there
were none such nowadays.

Now all this, of course, was merely the daydreaming of a girl whose
mind had never been taken up by a love affair of her own, and would
have had no serious consequence but for the discovery that morning of
the buried vault in her father's garden and the revelation of the
identity of its inmate. For when the apparently lifeless form had been
borne into the house, the face in the locket found upon the breast was
instantly recognized as that of Edith Bartlett, and by that fact,
taken in connection with the other circumstances, they knew that I was
no other than Julian West. Even had there been no thought, as at first
there was not, of my resuscitation, Mrs. Leete said she believed that
this event would have affected her daughter in a critical and
life-long manner. The presumption of some subtle ordering of destiny,
involving her fate with mine, would under all circumstances have
possessed an irresistible fascination for almost any woman.

Whether when I came back to life a few hours afterward, and from the
first seemed to turn to her with a peculiar dependence and to find a
special solace in her company, she had been too quick in giving her
love at the first sign of mine, I could now, her mother said, judge
for myself. If I thought so, I must remember that this, after all, was
the twentieth and not the nineteenth century, and love was, no doubt,
now quicker in growth, as well as franker in utterance than then.

From Mrs. Leete I went to Edith. When I found her, it was first of all
to take