and bent over the grave in silence. When she turned she drew Vida into her arms.

"My own, only darling, you love your mother?" she asked.

"Oh, mamma! better than all the world beside, but next to you I love Mr. Dane."

"You will owe him affection and gratitude as long as you live, for all he has done for you; but I don't want you to think of him now"

"How can I help it, mamma! He went to the Pinnacle yesterday, expecting me to render that long page in Sallust. How did he feel to find the house empty and us gone? Oh, I want to go back! I amwretched; that's what I am!" and the thought of the Dufferin rector brought a storm of tears which the sight of her far-off little brother's grave, and her dimly remembered father's house, had no power to evoke.

Agnes waited till her child had sobbed herself silent. "Vida, do you love your mother?" in a tone of absolute anguish.

"I will try, mamma."

"Do you love your own mother so well, that because she loves him you will love him, your own father, till he makes you love him for his own sake?' "For your sake, mamma, for your sake, I will I will try to love him."

"Then come with me." She snatched her to her breast and held her tight. She kissed her forehead, her eyes, her mouth. She strained her to her heart in one long, agonized embrace, then, speechless, led her up the lawn path toward the house. The lower shutters were not closed. A light shone faintly out on the back piazza. It burned in Cyril's old study. Softly Agnes, leading Vida, stole up to the window.

"Look!" she whispered, "look! There - is your

father."

The back of his chair was toward the window. His face in profile was distinctly visible from without. He was lying far back in an extension chair, his entire form supported. Against the table beside him leaned a crutch and cane. On it stood a shaded lamp, papers, and books. One arm was outstretched listlessly toward them, but he was gazing into the grate. He had received a letter from Circe that morning, saying that on Saturday she should sail for Havre in the French transatlantic steamer, L'Impératrice. He was wondering why this announcement did not move him more; why she already seemed extraneous to his existence, forming no intrinsic part of it. Because she was not, he was here to-night in his old home, his first, his only home. He had never forgiven her insulting allusion to his parentage. Her taunt that she supplied him with all the luxuries of his existence roused his latent manhood to the rescue of his self-respect. In health he was certainly in no wise dependent upon

her for anything save the unusual splendor of her abode and equipage, which she chose, and which it pleased him that she should support. His own income from public and private sources was ample for any modest style of living. Nor with all his lavish tastes had he been a spendthrift. When cut off by broken health from public place and the practice of his profession, he still owned Lotusmere, and possessed a moderate income from investments.

That night as he sat alone with the journal telling of Linda's death in his hand, he said, "Better poverty," for, compared with the splendor which surrounded him, anything that he could command by his own means was poverty, "better poverty than all this from a woman's bounty, when she has ceased to care for me. I shall go back to Lotusmere. If she does not choose

The

to go with me, she can stay away." "I shall go back to Europe. If he does not choose to go with me, so much the better. It is a living death to be obliged to drag about a half-dead man, triste, têtu, as he is now. I'll do it no longer. world is wide. This young, handsome man brings Europe back again; its slow, delicious, intoxicating air, its courts, its conquests. Why have I stayed in this barbarous country so long? Because I was idiot enough to allow myself to be infatuated by one miserable man. The spell is broken. I am going." So said Circe's fluent brain, while she tapped her pretty foot on the Turkish rug at the French minister's, and smiled upon the young Austrian baron above her emerald studded fan.

Both had carried out their resolve. Mrs. Sutherland King was ready to sail, and Mr. Cyril King, on account of ill health, had come back to the quiet retirement of Lotusmere. He seemed to be living in a dream. All his later life looked faded out. While living it he had avoided entering this house, and especially this room. It seemed to comfort him now, even while it made his loneliness more utter. It was Agnes who stood on the threshhold, his girl-wife; he saw her again as he used to see her, in those first bright, happy days. Oh, how was it that he was ever harsh and selfish and stern with her when she loved him so much that his lightest look was her law! It was because he was so selfish, that he had no comprehension how much such love was worth. He knew now to the deepest depth of his lonely heart, that it was worth more than all the world beside. He thought of his lost boy, his only son, into whose little life crept so faintly a father's tenderIn this very room he looked upon him last, and as the face, seraphic in death, came back to him, he groaned aloud.

ness.

And he had a little daughter: Vida, the image of himself. Had a daughter! she was not dead. She must be living still, somewhere in the world. How old? More than twelve years. If he could but see her! He had no right; he knew that. Yet it was not through utter indifference that he had sought no sign of her all these years. How could he, when she was with her mother? How could he confront that mother? How could he look into the eyes of Agnes, his wife? He never could. He longed to see her; but if she were to stand before him now, he would hide his face from her truth-searching gaze. But if Vida would appear, if he could see her golden head come in that door where her young mother used to stand, she would be to him as an angel come down from heaven.

The mother and daughter stood trembling without,

each face close to the window-pane. With every breath Agnes strained Vida tighter to her heart, as if she could never let her go.

Cyril groaned again, and turned his head restlessly toward the door.

"Now!" said Agnes, drawing Vida swiftly away. "Your father! dear child, remember that! Love him -for your mother's sake," and with an almost superhuman effort, she put from her own breast the clinging girl, opened the outer door, and, in tones that were a low wail, said: "Go, go to him! If you love me, do not come back." She gently thrust Vida in, closed the door, and shut her inside. Then, with a faint cry, wrung from love and anguish, the mother turned and sped alone out into the night.

The moment that Vida found herself in the dim hall alone, separated from her mother by the door which that mother's hand had shut, with that mother's last injunction still ringing in ears and heart, her own wild impulses for the instant seemed to be allayed, and she had but one thought that was to do her mother's bidding. "I hate him; I do!" she said with suppressed fury, drawing up her tall, slight figure till it seemed the incarnation of childish majesty. "I hate him, for he was not good to you, mamma, but I'll do as you tell me - if it kills me," and Vida pushed on to the door that she knew opened into the library.

A faint knock, so faint, indeed, that the solitary inmate of the room thought it must be a fancied sound, though he again turned his head uneasily toward the door. Another knock, faint, quick, yet tinglingly defined. Sickness, weakness, and remorse had filled Cyril King with superstitious feeling. The knock was so unusual, yet so certain, that his heart beat quicker, and the last tinge of color faded from his face. He felt as if he had lost the power of articulation. Another knock, more wiry and quicker than the other.

"Come in," said a hollow voice.

The door opened slowly. On the threshold, gazing intently in, stood a young girl dressed in white. Her face, as white as her dress, was set within shining masses of yellow hair, and lit with a pair of large eyes, which, in their preternatural excitement, seemed to flash and flame like stars.

"Great God!" It was the only exclamation of the occupant of the chair. That the image in the doorway could be of actual flesh, it did not occur to him to think, for he recognized at once the face of his child. After all she had died. His prayer was granted, and she was now sent to him to show him the exceeding loveliness of the daughter that he had ignored and lost.

The figure neither advanced nor retreated. It was impossible for Cyril to go to it. Vida was held mo tionless and speechless by a conflict of emotion more overpowering than his own. Her purpose was to obey her mother, yet she seemed to have no power to do it. The longer she gazed upon the man in the chair, the more her soul rose up against him.

66

"I hate you," she said, slowly advancing a few steps over the threshold. Why were you wicked to my mother! Why must I come back to you - when you don't love me, or love my mamma? It's because she loves you. Why will you love him, mamma? If you will, I cannot do as you tell me. I try, and I cannot-oh, I cannot!" and with one long, piercing cry, Vida sank down midway in the room.

That cry, so human, so girlish, so hysterical, was an inexpressible relief to Cyril King. His transcendent

and terrible little visitor at least was not a ghost. Vida's pure, strong health would not allow her to faint away. She simply sank down under her own overpowering excitement. She very soon arose again.

"My darling," said her father, in the gentlest voice, "will you go to the little stand over there, and fill a glass with wine and drink it? It will do you good."

"Thank you, but I never drank any wine; perhaps my mamma would not like to have me; so I would rather not."

"Very well, then you needn't. Will you bring that little low chair here, and sit down and talk with me?" Vida did as she was asked. She sat down before her father, but not near to him.

66

Will you tell me your name?" asked Cyril King, gazing upon her face with inexpressible sadness.

"Then why don't you love my mother? "God knows I do love her, Vida.” "If you loved her, how could you be so wicked to her asas to marry somebody else and she alive?"

"Because I was a wicked man, Vida. But if I was never punished before, I am punished now, when my only child tells me that she hates me."

"I don't want to hate you," said Vida with a softening voice, "but I can't help it when she tells me to love you for her sake. You must have been very bad to her, or she would come in. Why don't she come in? How can I live without my mother! and she says I must stay with you and comfort you.”

"She does? And you don't want to? I don't blame you, my child."

"I would want to - I mean I would be willing to,” said Vida with a longing thought of the far-off Pinnacle, "if my mamma could stay too. Why did she ever go away from here? I remember this room," looking around, "I remember when mamma led me by the hand down the lawn in my red stockings. What was it for? You hadn't married anybody then, had you?" with rising wrath.

One thing was perfectly apparent to Cyril. Agnes had never told of his shortcomings to their child. The very tumult of passionate grief amid which she now spoke and acted was partly caused by the conflict in her mind of facts dimly guessed at, or still more dimly remembered. Her affections and her perceptions were all at war. She looked like a wild dove beaten about in a hopeless storm.

"My darling, would you mind coming and sitting a little nearer to your father?" he asked tenderly. She looked at him searchingly, but did not move. "Your father cannot come nearer to you, or he would."

This time her glance fell upon the helpless arm, the supported form, and she moved her chair perceptibly, yet a very little way, forward.

"I want to see you, Vida. I want to see how much you look like your dear mother."

She held the little chair in her hand now, and drew it on where the light of the shaded lamp fell full upon her face. He was dumb before the vision it revealed to him. There, refined into early girlhood, were the perfect outlines of his own once magnificent form: there the curling masses of amber hair, the fine, imperious features - all his. But the great, soft, questioning eyes, lit with fitful flames that seemed to go out in dew, eyes that looked forth like two exiles, from the splendid beauty in which they were set these were the eyes of a girl that looked up to his in love, once, ages ago, by a gate in old Ulm.

"You have your mother's eyes, Vida," he said at last, and his own were dim.

The chair, unconsciously it seemed, came a little

nearer.

"I have been a bad, selfish man, Vida. I never deserved the love of your dear mother. My love was like myself. I took everything, and gave what was convenient. I loved your mother truly, at first, but I loved myself and my own gratification better than all the world beside. I never meant to be false to your mother, but I was, and she left me; left me that night she led you down the lawn. Two years later I was divorced, and married another. That woman by law is now my wife; that is why your dear mother says she cannot come to comfort me. I have never forgotten you, Vida. I have always loved my child. How could I come to you, or send for you, when I had treated your mother so badly? Will you believe me, when I tell you that every year since she left me, I have longed more and more for a sight of her dear face, for the sound of her voice, telling me that she forgave me? I never loved her as I love her now - when it is too late. Can you forgive me, Vida, the wrong I have done you? Can you hate me when I tell you that I repent, in sackcloth and ashes, of my many sins. you hate me a little less?"

66

"I-I don't hate you now.

Can

I am sorry for you." "I want you to be sorry for me, Vida. I am all alone now, as much as your mother, and I cannot walk about as she can."

"Can't you walk at all?" in tones of pity. "I am so sorry for you; I" rising and standing close to him— "I love you - almost. I could quite, if mamma could come. I don't see any other woman," gazing about as if the feminine foe to her happiness might be suspended on the wall. "I don't understand about two wives at once. I hate her now, that other wife. I shall always believe that my mamma is your wife, and nobody else."

"I've always been troubled with that belief myself, Vida; if I had not, I should have got more enjoyment than I did out of the flesh-pots of Egypt."

66

I never heard of such pots. My mamma never told me about them, or Mr. Dane either."

"Who is Mr. Dane?"

"He is the Dufferin rector, and my teacher." "Oh ho! Is he young?"

"Yes. Mamma says he is. He used to be so lonesome-looking; but he isn't now."

"What has revived his spirits?"

"Evelyn says it's his rides to the Pinnacle every week, that have done him so much good."

"More than for any one, except mamma," with a deep sigh.

"Does your mamma care as much for him as you do?"

"I think not. It don't seem as if she did. But she likes him. I know she does."

"She does! why do you think so?"

"Why, how could she help liking him! He has taught me for two years-everything I ought to know. And he brings mamma books. And they talk, when my lessons are over."

"Oh! they talk, do they? What do they talk about?

66

The first time he came to the Pinnacle, they talked about religion."

"And never mentioned the subject since?" "Not as they did then. Mr. Dane looked very se

vere at mamma, because she did not go twenty miles to church, but she didn't mind."

"Then your Mr. Dane is a sort of gospel martinet?"

"I don't know what that is."

"It's a religious tyrant. So he wishes to force your mother to go to his confounded church, and dares to look severely at her?”

66

Oh, no, he don't!" with an air of injury worthy of her sire. He's never looked severely at her since that first time. He looks ah, I think he looks as if he liked her ever so much. His face grows so gentle when he speaks to her. He is very nice," with another deep-drawn sigh.

Cyril King groaned. "His church is not confounded," said Vida, recalling the opprobrious epithet. "It's a beautiful stone church with a tower, a Gothic church with stained glass windows, and a great organ. I never knew anything so pleasant as to go and hear the chants, and and to see Mr. Dane in a gown, and to hear him preach. I understood every word he said. It was all about how we should govern our own spirits. I thought he meant me. I've such a temper, and I can't govern it."

"You will never govern it any better for listening to that man. No wonder, Vida, you have no love left for your father. That fellow has taken it all.”

"I don't like you to call him a 'fellow,'" said Vida, drawing back. "It don't sound nice. He is a gentleman; mamma says so. How can I help caring for him, when he has been so good to me?"

"And your father has not. Go on, child." "And so good, so very good, to mamma. most for him because of that."

I care

boys, about a boy. She put in many things that happened to my little brother; she said she did."

A heavy shadow passed over Cyril King's face. "Books! How did she ever happen to write books? And when they were written, what could she do with them up there in the woods?"

"She could send them to her publisher, and get money for them," said the princess Vida superbly. "So your mother has a publisher!"

"She has three or four. She has had them this long time. Why shouldn't she have publishers, if she can write books?"

"It's not every one who writes books who can get a publisher. It strikes me as the oddest thing I ever heard of, that your mother has written a book, to say nothing of publishers."

"Book! She has written more than one or two. The second one she wrote is 'The Annals of a Quiet City. Mr. Dane thinks everything of it, though he don't know that mamma wrote it, or that she ever wrote any book. But he never speaks as you do, as if she couldn't write one," said Vida, in tones of deep re-entment.

It's not that I think she couldn't, but that I think of her in such a different way. I knew she could paint. I wonder how she came to write?"

"Because it was in her to do it, I think," and the young haughty head went proudly up. "She sent away what she wrote, because she must have money to pay for her food and mine, and for our clothes, and for Evelyn's rooms, and for books, and for everything we had. Who would do it if my mamma didn't work?"

"I would gladly have sent your mother money, Vida, all you and she would have needed, but I did not know where she was. And if I had, I should have known also that she would not wish to take it from me." "No. How could she when"

looked anxiously about the room.

and Vida again

"You will see no one here to trouble you, Vida," said Cyril gloomily. "The person you naturally dread and dislike will not come back perhaps for a year. Till she does, will you be my little comforter?" sadly. "You say your dear mother brought you here for that, and I think she would not have brought you if she had not by some means known that I was alone." "Perhaps Mary Ben told her when she wrote." "Does Mary Ben write your mother?"

"Yes. Every month. She has ever since I can remember. She has gone to stay at Mary Ben's tonight. Oh, mamma! my own mamma!" and Vida again gazed toward the darkened window.

He

So it was in the sailor's house, the little house down at the Front, that Agnes once his Agnes - would sleep, if she could sleep, that night. And her own pretty room overhead empty, and he here, and their child! A sudden cry came up from his heart for her. could be nothing more to her. He knew that, but if he could see her sitting there where Vida sat, if he could only see her long enough to ask her forgiveness before they parted forever, that would be much, how much to him now.

Vida withdrew her long gaze from the window to see two large tears in her father's eyes. She had never seen tears in a man's eyes before. "Oh, don't, please don't cry!" and the same instant her soft hand was wiping the tears away. Did mighty nature assert herself in the touch, and through it thrill the mysterious bond of blood, the same in each heart?

"Then I can't love you, papa." "Then I don't detest him. name to me again."

You called him a 'fellow' over again. I—I think it's too bad," with a bitter sob.

"There, there! Don't cry, and I'll never call him so any more. You're a tyrant, Vida. You are ruling your sick parent with a rod of gold. And your mother writes books! What a pair you must be! The Annals of a Quiet City. To think my Aggie wrote it! I read it long ago, Vida. The name attracted me, Ulm Neil.' I knew some Ulmite wrote it, 'twas so full of Ulm; and to think it was your mother! she, Vida?"

"Yes. In Evelyn Dare's little back bedroom."

Did

How was it with the wife and mother, out alone in the darkness? As she rushed down that lawn path her feet faltered when she reached the grave of her child, and she sank down upon it. She had known no grief so bitter as this which now wrung her heart, since she sat there on the night of her first flight. Even then her child went with her to cheer her desolation. Now, after having lived so long, loved and renounced so much, she was going forth to unknown lands alone. She made the sacrifice of her own free-will, the final seal of her life-long love. And having made it, her own being arose in bitter revolt against the loneliness of her lot. Why must she live on to the end, bereft of all that women hold most dear? Surely she had wrought no wrong to any living creature, had committed no known sin, which should doom her to desolation all her days. Home, husband, children, love, friendship even - why was she robbed of them all? She shrank back from it, she could not bear it, the life of thought and of unceasing toil unlightened by the love that should be its inspiration, which she saw lengthening out before her, and that only, down to the very gate of the grave.

"My child, my child!" and it was for the child on earth, not the child in heaven, that she cried. Above her was the night sky of June, and its questioning stars. Before her the great Sound rolled in, lapping with hungry, human cry the stolid sands on its shore. Was there not a tone insatiate in every voice of nature? The very universe seemed to voice her cry of immortal want. Behind her was her home, her only home. In it sat her husband, yes, her husband, her child, while she sat here, nothing hers but a grave. Nothing, nothing! Her face lay prone upon it.

"I am tired," she said, "I feel as if I could not go another step, as if I could not think another thought, as if I could not endure another pang. If all might end here and now, I would thank God." But she drew herself up at last. She knew that she must go on. She turned to go down the narrow path to Mary Ben's, and the lighted windows drew her gaze backward.

Ah, if she could but see them once again before the ocean was set between them and her, -just once, just their faces together, to carry away with her. That picture would be so much better than nothing to her heart. She believed she could look upon it now. She would not go near, not very near; she would stand on the ground, outside the piazza, where it would not be possible for them to see her; and as she said this she was already retracing her steps over the lawn. Her feet clung to the turf that they might send forth no sound, and paused at last when she stood in direct line with the inmates of the library.

yes,

Cyril's face was distinctly visible and Vida, Vida was just rising from a low chair. The mother, with wildly beating heart, saw all that came after, the advancing, the retreating, the angry gestures, the dewy glances of her child. In spite of her own injunctions In spite of her own injunctions she knew that child too well to believe she would open her heart to her father, or reach his, without a struggle. But her affections would triumph at last; she knew that. Holding fast her own heart, she waited for that triumph out in the darkness alone. Then she could go her way saying, "It is well with him." She did not falter even when the cry came through the window, "Mamma! my own mamma!"

She saw the one outstretched arm, she saw the young head bent down, she heard the sobs of man and girl; then she would not sink to earth, she fled.

Is there any sense of human helplessness so utter as that one feels in the black night of a storm at sea? The abyss above, the abyss beneath, the vast hollow between, torn by the fury of elemental conflict, and resounding with the rush and roar of its revolt. Agnes held fast to her berth while one instant the great ship seemed plunging downward into a gulf of waters, and the next vaulted up, shuddering, upon the pitch of a spasmodic wave; then it shook, it rolled to and fro, as if its mighty bars were about to part and go down forever; yet it went on. The wind shrieked through the cordage and tore everything in its path. Lights went out, voices called, bells rang, the great heart of the engine struggled with convulsive throb against the throes of ocean, as if it were a death-struggle to see which should stop and which beat on. The ocean and the sky seemed to collapse together.

But in

have stripped it of all its mystery of terror. darkness and helplessness human hearts and voices were crying out to Heaven. Groans and prayers and shrieks of terror came up from the lower deck. The great saloon was full of sobs and murmured prayers, While the crying of little children and the moaning of the sick added the final note of human appeal to the miserere of the tempest. Agnes clung to her couch in that silent daze of faith and prayer which in some organizations is the result of extreme danger descending upon extreme sorrow. It was awful. It was like the night of judgment. If she could stand long enough to help anybody, how gladly she would try. It was impossible. She could do nothing but lie there, be thumped about, and await the end. Of course the end was very nigh. The great ship must divide and go down. It was dreadful that those little children, those tender women, must be engulfed in the ravening sea; but she could not save them. She was going down with them, and of her human sorrow that would be the end. "It is well," she said with a weary sigh. "I am tired. What could music, or art, or high thought be to me now?

"We are so tired, my heart and I!"

"It is cold," she murmured with a shudder, as a mounting sea rushed in a whirlpool over the deck, "very cold; but I shall not be in it. That of me which feels warmth or cold, that thinks, loves, and suffers, will not be in the sea but at rest, at rest in peace, through the merciful love of God, at rest in Him, somewhere in his universe. Father, forgive my sins, and keep my darlings as in the hollow of thy loving hand forever and forever."

On this prayer the morning dawned. The storm went down. The universe looked one waste of waves. The ocean was a heaving plain of gray. A firmament of sullen gray came down to meet it. Out of both came a mighty moan. Now and then two waves would rise up from their uneasy bed with foaming mane, collide, fly on, topple, and fall with a roar of pain. Great shreds of ragged mist, torn from the long, low, level cloud that barred the watery waste, went scurrying by. The muffled thud of a gun throbbed through flying storm-mist that still clung to the sea. Presently through its opaque gray glimmered a signal light. Then another cannon boom shuddered out into space.

"A ship in distress!" was the low cry that flew from grateful lip to lip on board the strong Cunarder, that, outriding the storm unvanquished, bore every soul of her precious human freight into the gray morning dawn unharmed. "A ship in distress!"

Every officer and man of the crew, from the captain to the stoker, beaten and worn as they were with the long night watch and work, stood none the les alert to answer to the cry for human help. Every moment the shock of the gun became nearer, the gleam of the sig nal light clearer; at last came the hoarse shout: "Ship ahoy!" The cry of the human voice struck through every listening heart, thrilling and chilling it as no boom of cannon could.