otion, he removed my hand,--then looked down on
me with a smile. "'You are strangely obtuse,'" he said, quoting my own
words of two years before. "What can Mrs. Haughton desire from a base
fortune-hunter with whom she is unhappily connected by marriage, but a
humility that does not presume on the relationship?"

I saw a bold stroke was needed, and that I must stoop to conquer. "Oh,
William," I said, sorrowfully, "you called me vindictive once, but it
is you who are really so. I was unhappy, harassed, distracted
between"----

"Between what?"

"I do not know--I mean I cannot tell you," I stammered, with
well-feigned confusion. "Can you not forgive me, William? Often and
often, since you left me that day, I have wished to see you, and to
tell you how I repented my hasty and ungenerous words. Will you not
pardon me? Shall we not be friends again?"

"I am not vindictive," he said, more kindly,--"least of all toward you.
But I cannot see how you should desire the friendship of one whom you
regard as a mercenary hypocrite. When you can truthfully assure me that
you disbelieve that charge, then, and not till then, will I forgive you
and be your friend."

"Let it be now, then," I said, joyfully, holding out my hand. He did
not reject it;--we were reconciled.

William had come home ill; the hardships of the expedition and the
fearful cold of the Arctic Zone had been too much for him. The very
night of his return I noticed in his countenance a frequent flush
succeeded by a deadly pallor; my quick ear had caught, too, the sound
of a cough,--not frequent or prolonged, but deep and hollow. And now,
for the first time in my long and dreary toil, I saw the path clear and
the end in view.

Every one knows with what enthusiasm the returned travellers were
hailed. Amid the felicitations, the praises, the banquets, the varied
excitements of the time, William forgot his ill-health. When these were
over, he reopened his office, and prepared to enter once more on the
active duties of his profession. But he was unfit for it; John and I
both saw this, and urged him to abandon the attempt for the
present,--to stay with us, to enjoy rest, books, society, and not till
his health was fully reestablished undertake the prosecution of
business.

"You forget, my good sister," he laughingly said to me one day,--(he
could jest on the subject now,)--"that I have not the fortune of our
John,--I did not marry an heiress, and I have my own way to