certain assurance of Godfrey's residence, though
the kitchen was untenanted. I could not tarry
there, so near to the completion of my hopes,
and leading Daisy quickly through, I ascended
to the room where we, as children, had made our
first essays at painting upon the
whitewashed walls. We heard the movements of
some one within, deleberate footsteps passing
hither and thither; and Daisy laid her hand upon
the latch, and in a moment stood face to face
with Godfrey.

The window in the southward gable was
shrouded to the topmost panes, and the sun,
low-lying at that season, though it was now
noontide, did not rise above the lintel, and
shone in a stream of condensed brightness upon
Daisy, as she stood just within the door, beside
the easel where Godfrey was painting. The
rest of the room was in comparative obscurity,
but my eyes, educated to a rapid observation
of effect in light and shade, discovered the
glimmering forms of white plaster casts, and
burnished bronze models, and draped lay-figures
scattered about, with elaborated pictures, not
of still, inanimate landscapes, but of vivid
human life and interest. I saw them without
looking, for my attention was riveted upon my
brother. On his face, whose likeness I had so
often painted that I knew every line, I was
reading anxiously the record, the indelible,
authentic register of these past years; the broad
forehead furrowed with austere gloom; the
dark, deep-set eyes fixed upon Daisy in a gaze
of concentrated intensity that never wavered
into softness; the lips locked into morose
reticence and disdain. He did not glance
towards me, and for a minute or two we all stood
motionless and speechless.

"You have been avenged," said Daisy, her
eyes drooping before Godfrey's gaze, and she
spoke in a calm passionateless tone of suffering
as if she was resuming an interrupted confession
had been often repeated and learned with much
labour. "You have been avenged sorely.
I did not know myself, nor did you know me,
or you would never have laid upon me the trial
of a long separation. If I was not assured
every day of love, it died out of my consciousness,
and I turned elsewhere. Even my father
I used to think little of when he was not
present. The long weeks and months, and the
distance of many miles between us, blotted out the
reality of our engagement. It was only what I
saw that I could feel; and when I never met
your eyes looking on me, nor heard your voice
calling me, nor felt your hand holding mine, I
forgot you. And my cousin was there, always
with me from morning till night, meeting me
everywhere with some demonstration of his
passionate love; and my father urged me, and
Emma was gone away as well as you, so that I had
no one to help me to be true to you. I was true
to my nature, Godfrey; if you had understood
me, you would not have trusted me to
myself at your side, and leaning upon you, I
could have been faithful, but not alone as I was
left. I did love you as I could love, and you
have been avenged. Since I was false to you, I
have been made to look upon all misery with
wide-open eyes that could not close to shut it
out; and now that I am here before you, never
having seen your face since that day when you
left me to be away for two long years, and I
could die for very sorrow at your feet, I meet
neither love nor pardon, but irreconcilable
hatred."

"No, no, not hatred, Daisy," I exclaimed,
advancing to her side, and encountering
Godfrey's momentary glance.

"Yes, hatred!" she continued, looking up
wistfully into his dark face; " your heart does
not move towards me for an instant. If you
had loved me less you could not hate me now.
I come to you from visions of murder and
massacre, from burning homes, and files of
dying men, and the sufferings of women perishing
by hunger, and thirst, and awful terror;
from the cruel death of my husband and the
unburied bodies of my children, seen, seen until the
misery is burnt into my memory, and I cannot
forget it even in my sleep. I come to you
broken-hearted, with only a wretched remnant
of life, in the hope of restoring you to yourself
and to Emma, who has been constant to you
with the fidelity of a true woman. Yet you are
like a rock to me. I measure your first love by
the implacable hatred which no one ever felt
before for me; and it torments me. Godfrey,
pity me; give me one morsel of consolation
before I die."

"Margaret Wilson," he said, "you have
spoken truly of your nature. You are a woman;
the creature of the moment; swayed by any
passion. Just now you imagine you could die
at my feet in a paroxysm of penitence and
sorrow, but before you could descend into yonder
valley, you would be ready for another emotion
as vehement and unreasoning. I cannot tell for
what you have followed me. If you cannot bear
to see any but fair scenes, why did you come up
here to look upon the solitude of the life to
which you doomed me? What did you hope
for? What effect is this wild appeal to have
upon me? Your tribulation has no charm for
me; there is no balm to be extracted from the
knowledge of your misery. I would not have
had you crushed, poor fluttering creature, any
more than I would exert my strength to crush
a butterfly upon the moors. If this be all you
came for, to expend the futile passion of an hour,
you may return home. If it be aid you want, I
have money for you, money that will satisfy you,
for I am no longer a poor and unknown artist."

"Kill her at once, Godfrey," I cried,
indignantly.

"Nay, Emma," he answered, "no words of
mine can wound her, if she has passed alive
through the troubles she speaks of. What,
shall a woman, a delicate, tender-hearted woman,
come from the murder of her husband and the
death of her children, to be killed at last by the
reproaches of a discarded lover? Why did you
come to rob me of the peace I have gleaned
painfully from these blighted harvests of hope