dream, visions of the happiness that might have
been mine.

As I stood thus, with tears stealing through
the clasped hands that covered my eyes, my
nurse came in to close the shutters. She
started nervously when she saw me.

"I thought you were your mother," she
exclaimed. "I have seen her stand just so, hundreds
of times."

"Susan, how was it that my mother did not
marry Mr. Fraser?"

"They were like other people — didn't understand
one another, much as they were in love,"
she answered. "Mr. Fraser's first marriage had
been for money, and was not a happy one, so he
had grown something stern. They quarrelled,
and your mother was provoked to marry Mr.
Gretton, your father. Well! Mr. Fraser became
an old man all at once, and scarcely ever
left his own house; so that she never saw him
again, near as he lived: though I have often seen
her, when your father was off to balls or races or
public meetings, standing here just as you stood
now. Only the last time you were in her arms, she
was leaning against this window when I brought
you in to say good night, and she whispered
soflly, looking up to Heaven, "I have tried to do
my duty to my husband and to my little child!"

"Nurse," I said, "leave me; do not shut the
window yet." It was no longer a selfish emotion
that possessed me. I had been murmuring
that there was no sorrow like my sorrow; but
my mother's error had been graver, and her
trials deeper than mine. The burden she had
borne had weighed her down into an early grave;
but it had not passed away from earth with
her. It rested now, heavily augmented by
her death, upon the heart of the aged man, who,
doubtless, in the contemplative time, was reviewing
the events of his past life, and this, chiefly,
because it was the saddest of them all. I longed
to see him once again to see him who had
mourned my mother's death more bitterly and
lastingly than any other being, and I determined
to steal secretly across the fields, and up the
avenue, and, if his window were uncurtained as
its brightness suggested, to look upon him once
more in remembrance of my mother.

I hesitated upon our door-step, as though my
mother and myself were both concerned in some
doubtful enterprise; but, with the hardihood of
my nature, I drove away the scruple, and passed
on into the frosty night.

Yes, the window was uncurtained. I could
tell that at the avenue gate; and I should see
him, whom my mother loved, lying alone and
uncheered upon his couch, as he would lie now
all his weary years through, till Lucy Fraser
was old enough to be a daughter to him. And
then I remembered a rumour that the old man's
grandchild was dying, which Susan had told me
sorrowfully an hour or two ago; and, growing
bewildered, I ran on swiftly until I stood
before the window.

It was no longer an invalid's room; the couch
was gone and the sheltering screen, and Lucy's
little chair within it. Neither were there any
appliances of modern luxury or wealth; no
softness, nor colouring, nor gorgeousness: it was
simply the library and workroom of a busy
student, who was forgetful and negligent of comfort.
Yet, such as it was, my heart recognised it as
home. There Martin sat, deep, as was his wont,
in complicated calculations, and frequent
reference to the books that were strewn about

Could it be possible that yonder absorbed
man had once spoken passionately to me of
love, and now he sat in light, and warmth, and
indifference, almost within reach of my hand,
while I, like an outcast, stood in cold,
and darkness, and despair? Was there, then,
no echo of my footstep lingering about the
threshold, and no shadowy memory of my face
coming between him and his studies? I had
forfeited the right to sit beside him, reading
the observations his pencil noted down, and
chasing away the gloom that was deepening on
his nature; and I had not the hope, which
would have been really a hope and a consolation
to me, that some other woman, more true and more
worthy, would by-and-by own my forfeited right.

I heard a bell tinkle, and Martin rose and left
the room. I wondered if I should have time
to creep in, and steal but one scrap of paper
which had been thrown aside carelessly; but, as
I tremblingly held the handle of the glass door,
he returned, bearing in his arms the emaciated
form of little Lucy Fraser. He had wrapped
her carefully in a large cloak, and now, as he
wheeled a chair to the fire and placed her in it,
every rigid lineament of his countenance was
softened into tenderness. I stretched out my
arms towards him with an intense yearning to
be gathered again to his noble heart, and have
this chill and darkness dissipated; I turned away,
with this last tender image of him graven on my
memory, to retrace my steps to my desolate home.

There was a sudden twittering in the ivy
overhead, and a little bird, pushed out of its nest
into the cold night air, came fluttering down,
and flew against the lighted panes. In an
instant, his dog, which had been uneasy at my
vicinity before, stood baying at the window, and
I had only time to escape and hide myself among
the shrubs, when he opened it, and stepped
out upon the terrace. The dog tracked down
the path by which I had come, barking joyfully
as he careered along the open fields; and, as
Martin looked round, I cowered more closely
into the deepest shadows. I knew he must find
me; for my footmarks were plain upon the
newly-fallen snow, and an extravagant sensation
of shame and gladness overpowered me. I saw
him lose the footprints once or twice, but at
last he was upon the right trace, and, lifting the
boughs beneath which I had hidden, he found
me among the laurels. I was crouching, and he
stooped down curiously.

"It is Stella," I said, faintly.

"Stella?" he echoed.

He lifted me from the ground like a truant
child, whom he had expected home every hour,
carried me across the terrace into the library,
and set me down in the light and warmth of