No—and I will write to Shanklin by the next
post.

"Always yours affectionately,
"HARRIET GARTH."

The letter dropped from Magdalen's hand.
Thoughts which had never risen in her mind
yet, rose in it now.

Norah, whose courage under undeserved
calamity, had been the courage of resignation—
Norah, who had patiently accepted her hard
lot; who, from first to last, had meditated no
vengeance, and stooped to no deceit—Norah had
reached the end which all her sister's ingenuity,
all her sister's resolution, and all her sister's
daring, had failed to achieve. Openly and
honourably, with love on one side and love on
the other, Norah had married the man who
possessed the Combe-Raven money—and
Magdalen's own scheme to recover it had opened
the way to the event which had brought husband
and wife together!

As the light of that overwhelming discovery
broke on her mind, the old strife was renewed;
and Good and Evil struggled once more which
should win her—but with added forces this time;
with the new spirit that had been breathed into
her new life; with the nobler sense that had
grown with the growth of her gratitude to the
man who had saved her, fighting on the better
side. All the higher impulses of her nature, which
had never, from first to last, let her err with
impunity—which had tortured her, before her
marriage and after it, with the remorse that no woman
inherently heartless and inherently wicked can
feel—all the nobler elements in her character
gathered their forces for the crowning struggle, and
strengthened her to meet, with no unworthy
shrinking, the revelation that had opened on her
view. Clearer and clearer, in the light of its
own immortal life, the truth rose before her
from the ashes of her dead passions, from the
grave of her buried hopes. When she looked at
the letter again—when she read the words once
more, which told her that the recovery of the
lost fortune was her sister's triumph, not hers
—she had victoriously trampled down all little
jealousies and all mean regrets; she could say in
her heart of hearts, " Norah has deserved it!"

The day wore on. She sat absorbed in her
own thoughts, and heedless of the second letter
which she had not opened yet, until Kirke's
return.

He stopped on the landing outside, and, opening
the door a little way only, asked, without
entering the room, if she wanted anything that
he could send her. She begged him to come
in. His face was worn and weary; he looked
older than she had seen him look yet. " Did
you put my letter on the table for me?" she
asked.

"Yes. I put it there at the doctor's request."

"I suppose the doctor told you it was from
my sister? She is coming to see me, and Miss
Garth is coming to see me. They will thank
you for all your goodness to me, better than I
can."

"I have no claim on their thanks," he
answered, sternly. " What I have done, was
not done for them, but for you." He waited a
little, and looked at her. His face would have
betrayed him, in that look; his voice would have
betrayed him, in the next words he spoke—if
she had not guessed the truth already. " When
your friends come here," he resumed, " they
will take you away, I suppose, to some better
place than this?"

"They can take me to no place," she said,
gently, " which I shall think of as I think of
the place where you found me. They can take
me to no dearer friend than the friend who has
saved my life."

There was a moment's silence between them.

"We have been very happy here," he went
on, in lower and lower tones. " You won't
forget me, when we have said good-by?"

She turned pale, as the words passed his lips;
and, leaving her chair, knelt down at the table,
so as to look up into his face, and to force him
to look into hers.

"Why do you talk of it?" she asked. " We
are not going to say good-by— at least, not yet."

"I thought—-" he began.

"Yes?"

"I thought your friends were coming here—-"

She eagerly interrupted him. " Do you think
I would go away with anybody," she said, " even
with the dearest relation I have in the world—
and leave you here, not knowing and not caring
whether I ever saw you again? Oh, you don't
think that of me!" she exclaimed, with the
passionate tears springing into her eyes—" I'm
sure you don't think that of me!"

"No," he said; "I never have thought, I
never can think, unjustly or unworthily of you."

Before he could add another word, she left
the table as suddenly as she had approached it,
and returned to her chair. He had unconsciously
replied in terms that reminded her of the hard
necessity which still remained unfulfilled—the
necessity of telling him the story of the past.
Not an idea of concealing that story from his
knowledge crossed her mind. "Will he love
me, when he knows the truth, as he loves me
now?" That was her only thought, as she tried
to approach the subject in his presence without
shrinking from it.

"Let us put my own feelings out of the question,"
she said. " There is a reason for my not
going away, unless I first have the assurance of
seeing you again. You have a claim—the
strongest claim of anyone—to know how I came
here, unknown to my friends, and how it was
that you found me fallen so low."

" I make no claim," he said, hastily. " I
wish to know nothing which it distresses you
to tell me."

"You have always done your duty," she
rejoined, with a faint smile. " Let me take
example from you, if I can, and try to do
mine."

"I am old enough to be your father," he said,
bitterly. " Duty is more easily done at my age
than it is at yours."