f amendment. Not that he
understood why she was so much more effusive than of old, but if it
augured a happier life together, he was glad.

As they drove up to the door of the old home, crowded with memories
and associations, a shudder passed over the girl: she grasped her
father's hand in her own almost convulsively, and he heard her say
below her breath, "Poor papa!"

He wondered why she pitied him. The place must surely be full of
memories of her mother for her: why did she say "Poor papa!" to him?
He did not see what she saw--that peaceful September evening, and the
bottle of cherry-water on the table, with the little phial of thirty
deaths in her hand; and now the contents emptied into the harmless
draught; and now madame pale and dead. The whole scene transacted
itself vividly before her, and she shuddered at her memories and her
past self, as always with a kind of vague wonder how she could have
been so wicked, and where did she get the force, the courage, for such
a cruel crime?

For all these four years at school the shadow of that dreadful deed
had been ever in the background of her life; and as time went on, and
she came to a better understanding of morality, it grew clear to her
as a crime. Its consciousness of guilt had broken down her pride, and
thus had made her more malleable, more humble. She could no longer
harden herself in her belief that she was superior to every one else.
Those girls, her companions--they had not had an Andalusian mother,
truly; they did not pray to the saints, and the Holy Virgin took no
care of them; they were Protestants and English, frogs and pigs; but
they had not committed murder. If she should stand up in the middle
of the room and tell them what she had done, which of them would touch
her hand again? which of them speak to her? English and Protestants as
they were, how far superior in their innocence to her, an Andalusian
Catholic, in her guilt! But no one lives with remorse. It comes and
goes gustily, fitfully; but the things of the present are stronger
than the things of the past, else the man with a shameful secret in
his life would go mad.

One of these gusty storms broke over Leam as she passed through the
gates of the old home, and for the moment she felt as if she must
confess the truth to her father and tell him what evil thing she had
done. Yet it passed, as other such storms had passed: the things of
the present took their natural place of prominence, and tho