not otherwise be accounted for. For some time
Clare had not looked at the books which reached
her with this terribly significant imprint. She
had not destroyed them, but she had put them
away out of her sight. One day, after her
cousin's marriage, and when her thoughts—
forcibly distracted for some time by the preparations,
the hospitalities, and the rejoicings
attendant on that event—had flown back to the
subject which had such tormenting attraction
for her, a sudden impulse of utter incredulity
seized her. Nothing was changed in the facts,
nothing in the circumstances; but Clare laid
aside reason under the suddenly exerted power
of feeling, and refused to believe that Paul
Ward had murdered the unknown man in
whose company he had been, and who
undoubtedly had been murdered.

"I won't believe it! I don't believe it!"

These words have often been uttered by the
human will, when tortured by the terrible
impotence of human despair, as unreasonably, as
obstinately, as Clare Carruthers spoke them,
and with infinitely more suffering implied in
the inevitable reaction. But they can seldom
have brought greater relief. A generous, reckless
impulse ot youth, partly against the terrible
knowledge of evil, partly against her own suffering,
which wearied and oppressed her spirit,
distant, vague, even chimerical, as she told
herself it was, animated her resolution. She
rose, and stretched her arms out, and shook
her golden head, as though she discarded a
baleful vision by a strong act of her will.

"I shall never see him again," she thought.
"I shall never know his fate, unless, indeed, he
becomes famous, and the voice of his renown
reaches me. I shall never know the truth of
this dreadful story; but, strong as the
evidence is, I never will believe it more. Never!
never!"

Clare Carruthers was too young, too little
accustomed to the sad science of self-examination,
too candidly persuadable by the natural
abhorrence of youth for grief, to ask herself
how much of this resolution came from the
gradual influence of time—how much from the
longing she felt to escape from the constant
pressure of the first misery she had ever known.
The impulse, the resolution, had come to her,
with her first waking thoughts, one glorious
morning in the early autumn—the morning
which saw George Dallas and his uncle
arrive at Homburg, and witnessed Mr.
Carruthers's reception of his step-son. This
resolution she never abandoned. That day
she had taken the books out of their hiding-
place, and had set herself to read the serial
story which she knew was written by him.
Something of his mind, something of his
disposition, would thus reveal itself to her. It
was strange that he remembered to send her
the books so punctually, but that might mean
nothing; they might be sent by the publisher,
by his order. He might have forgotten her
existence by this time. Clare Carruthers was
sensible, and not vain, and she saw nothing
more than a simple politeness in the circumstance.
So she read the serial novel, and
thought over it; but it revealed nothing to
her. There was one description, indeed, which
reminded her, vaguely, of Mrs. Carruthers, as
she had been before her illness, as Clare
remembered her, when she had first seen her,
years ago. Clare liked the story. She was
not enthusiastically delighted with it. A change
which her newly formed resolution to believe
him innocent, to chase from her all that had
tormented her, could never undo, had passed
upon Clare, since her girlish imagination had
been ready to exalt Paul Ward, "the author,"
Paul Ward, "the artist," as she had called
him, with all the reverence her innocent heart
accorded to such designations, into a hero;
she had less impulse in her now, she had
suffered, in her silent unsuspected way, and
suffering is a sovereign remedy for all enthusiasm,
except that of religion. But she discerned
in the story something which made her
reason second her resolution. And from that
day Clare grieved no more. She waited, she
did not know for what; she hoped, she did not
know why; she was pensive, but not unhappy.
She was very young, very innocent, very trustful;
and the story of the murder was six
months old. So was that of the meeting, and
that of the myrtle-sprig; and all three were
growing vague.

The young girl's thoughts were very busy as
she rode from the Sycamores to Poynings, but
not exclusively with Paul Ward.

Her life presented itself in a more serious
aspect to her then than it had ever before worn.
All things seemed changed. Her uncle's letters
to her had undergone a strange alteration. He
wrote now to her as to one whom he trusted, to
whom he looked for aid, on whom he purposed
to impose a responsible duty. The pompousness
of Mr. Carruthers's nature was absolutely
inseparable from his style of writing as from his
manner of speech, but the matter of his letters
atoned for their faults of manner. He wrote
with such anxious affection of his wife, he wrote
with such kindly interest of Mr. Dallas, the
hitherto proscribed step-son, whose name Clare
had never heard pronounced by his lips or in
his presence. Above all, he seemed to expect
very much from Clare. Evidently her life was
not to be empty of interest for the future, if
responsibility could fill it; for Clare was to be
entrusted with all the necessary arrangements
for Mrs. Carruthers's comfort, and Mrs.
Carruthers was very anxious to get back to
England, to Poynings, and to Clare! The girl
learned this with inexpressible gladness, but
some surprise. She was wholly unaware of the
feelings with which Mrs. Carruthers had
regarded her, and the intentions of maternal care
and tenderness which she had formed—feelings
she had hidden, intentions she had abandoned
from motives of prudence founded on her
thorough comprehension of the besetting weakness
of her husband's character.

Clare had not the word of the enigma, and it