endure, grew and waxed strong upon the ashes
of the fiery emotions which had at first spent
her strength. Leonard had said, in almost
the last words his voice had borne to her:

"Have no fear. We can bear it."

Nevertheless, there were seasons of exquisite
pain—of ineffable weariness and desolation,
when the face of Consolation was hid
from her, and the presence of Peace was no
longer with her. Seasons of doubt, of self-
upbraidings—when she could fain have called
herself traitress to the great truth of her life;
and, in bitterness and scorn looked on the
submission which she had learned so hardly.
But one doubt never came to her—the cruelest,
the worst pang was spared. Next to her
trust in Heaven was her faith in Leonard.
After all, she who loves thus, is happy.

Meanwhile, there came many suitors to
Miss Bellew, and even when her youthful
radiance had faded, as it did fade sooner than
it should have done, many came. And her
father chafed wrathfully at the whimsical
obstinacy of woman-nature, but nodded his
head wisely the while, saying, "In time—oh,
in time!"

At length, one strange, wonderful day,
there came to Rosamond a letter. Leonard
wrote, openly and. with no attempt at
disguise—it was singular that, so sent, the
letter ever reached her. But it came—she
had it, this absolute, tangible, visible thought
from him to her. Only a few words—but
there could be no more to Rosamond than
they held for her. He said—"Tell Mr. Bellew
I have written. I do not seek to deceive
him, as you know, my Rosamond. But
I must write, I will write. Something must
go from me that your eyes will look on, that
your heart will receive. Soul to soul we are
together, but while we live otherwise than
in the soul, we crave for more, and the
humanity is strong within me, and cries loudly."
Little more than this—but it was enough.
It lit her life for many, many months. Moreover,
she wrote back openly, as he had done,
and never knew that Mr. Bellew, grown more
cautious and acute, for his former negligence,
did not suffer the letter to go. More than
once in the years that followed, letters were
intercepted by the watchful, inexorable old
man. Rosamond never knew—never sus-
pected.

So the years went on. The two little girls
grew up, and one after the other, the elder
sister saw them leave her. Her brother was
at the head of the great mercantile house of
Bellew, and at last the old merchant retired
with his eldest daughter to an estate he had
lately purchased, and which he had settled
on Rosamond. There the old man lingered
out his remaining days, and there he died,
nine years after Leonard Ross had left England
for India.

Then Rosamond was alone. She lived a
very quiet, solitary life, only different from
what it had been before her father's death,
inasmuch as her close and devoted attention
to him being remitted, she had more time
to give to the charities and other beautiful
and womanly duties with which her life was
lustrous. The Lady of the Manor was like a
good angel to the poor, the ignorant, and the
suffering around her. The appearance of the
tall, slender figure, with its gentle, gliding
dignity of movement, and the drooped face,
so sweet and pale and thoughtful, was a signal
of help and consolation to many an aching
heart in the village and about the country
where she lived.

Thus it was one day early in January, such
a day as comes sometimes in mid-winter like
a thought of childhood to an old man; telling
wondrous tidings of the far-away spring that
is—though we see it not,—and that will
surely come to us again. It was evening,
and the sun was near to his setting: great
purple clouds hung about him, and
fragments of them, as of a rent robe, were
scattered over the clear sky. The wide
landscape seemed to tremble in the amber light
that was shed across it from the west;
the leafless branches of the trees were
traced, intensely black against the golden
horizon, while groves of dark and heavy-foliaged
firs opposed their rounded masses of shadow
to the lustrous heaven, and would not draw
in any of the radiance with which the world
was overflowing.

Nestling among the abrupt hills and wild
breaks of moorland, lay the park and manor-
house where Rosamond Bellew lived. The
greensward sloped to a broad stream that
flowed through the domain; beyond it rose
woods, purpling in the distance. Crowning the
hill, nearer, was a grove of pines, tall, column-
like, and with a "whushing" music, as of distant
waves, ever murmuring about their crests.
Great trees stood grandly about the park—
benign oak, and lofty beech, cedars, with a
mystery in their low-spreading branches, and their
eternal depth of shade. Joyous with aërial
beauty the birches looked, grouped on a slope
near the grey old mansion, like girls who
longed but were ashamed to run. They were
divided by an invisible fence from the dainty
garden underneath the windows of the lady's
special sitting-room. Behind these birches
the radiance of the sunset grew and faded
every evening now, and Rosamond always
stood at her window to watch it.

She stood there now—a tall, grey-clad
woman; no longer young, either in face, in
figure, or in movement; but fair still, and
gracious to behold, with a look which had in
it some kinship to the clear, cold, and pure
serenity of the winter evening. So she stood,
her hands clasped lightly together, shining
white upon the dusky, cloud-like folds of her
robe, watching the sunset, and thinking—
thinking—thinking.

Not fifty miles from that quiet English
valley flows the sea, and its waves break