moment, to take you in her arms. Mother, pray for me, and may God be
very merciful to you, my dearest, and to--

"Your devoted child,

"BERYL."

She had bound the withered flowers together with a strip of fringe from
her shawl, and now, with dry eyes and firm white lips, she kissed them
twice, pinned the last note around them and laid the whole in Mrs.
Foster's hand.

"I trust you to deliver them in person to Dr. Grantlin before you sleep
to-night; and if I survive this awful outrage, perpetrated under the
name of law, I will find you some day, and thank you."

Looking at the lovely face, pure in its frozen calm, as some marble
lily in the fingers of a monumental effigy, Mrs. Foster felt the tears
dimming her own vision and said earnestly:

"Keep as silent as possible. The less you say, the safer you will be;
and run no risk of contradicting your own statements."

"I appreciate your motive, but I have nothing to conceal."

Beryl laid her hand on her shawl, then drew back.

"Am I allowed the use of my shawl?"

"Oh, certainly, madam."

The officer would have opened and put it around her, but with an
indescribable movement of proud repulsion, she shook it out, then
wrapped it closely about her, and sat down, keeping her eyes fixed on
the face of the clock ticking over the fireplace. After a long and
profound silence, the man who had arrested her, said gravely and gently:

"Time is up. I must deliver you to Officer Gibson at the train. Come
with me."

She rose, gave her hand to Mrs. Foster, and stooping suddenly touched
with her lips the withered flowers, then followed silently.

In subsequent years, when she attempted to recall consecutively the
incidents of the ensuing forty-eight hours, they eluded her, like the
flitting phantasmagoria that throng delirium; yet subtle links fastened
the details upon her brain, and sometimes most unexpectedly, that
psychic necromancer--association of ideas--selected some episode from
the sombre kaleidoscope of this dismal journey, and set it in lurid
light before her, as startling and unwelcome as the face of an enemy
long dead. Life and personality partook in some degree of duality; all
that she had been before she saw Elm Bluff, seemed a hopelessly
distinct existence, yet irrevocably chained to the mutilated and
blackened Afterward, like the grim and loathsome unions enforced by the
Noyades of Nantes.

The sun did not forget to shine, nor the moon to keep her appoint