would not have done it--"

"I know," interrupted Maggie. "She despised this Hester Warren, and
consigned her portrait to some spot from which you have brought it and
had this taken from it."

"Not despised her!" cried Rose, in great distress, as she saw a dark
expression stealing over the face of Maggie, in whose heart a chord of
sympathy had been struck when she thought of her mother banished from
her father's side. "Grandma could not despise her," continued Rose;
"she was so good, so beautiful."

"Yes, she was beautiful," murmured Maggie, gazing earnestly upon the
fair, round face, the soft, black eyes, and raven hair of her who for
years had slept beneath the shadow of the Hillsdale woods. "Oh, I wish
I were dead like her!" she exclaimed at last, closing the ambrotype
and laying it upon the table. "I wish I was lying in that little grave
in the place of her who should have borne my name, and been what I
once was;" and bowing her face upon her hands she wept bitterly, while
Rose tried in vain to comfort her. "I am not sorry you are my sister,"
sobbed Margaret through her tears. "That's the only comfort I have
left me now; but, Rose, I love Arthur Carrollton so much--oh, so much,
and how can I give him up!"

"If he is the noble, true-hearted man he looks to be, he will not give
you up," answered Rose, and then for the first time since this meeting
she questioned Margaret concerning Mr. Carrollton and the relations
existing between them. "He will not cast you off," she said, when
Margaret had told her all she had to tell. "He may be proud, but he
will cling to you still. He will follow you, too--not to-day, perhaps,
nor to-morrow, but ere long he will surely come;" and, listening to
her sister's cheering words, Maggie herself grew hopeful, and that
evening talked animatedly with Henry and Rose of a trip to the seaside
that they were intending to make. "You will go, too, Maggie," said
Rose, caressing her sister's pale cheek, and whispering in her ear,
"Aunt Susan will be here to tell Mr. Carrollton where you are, if he
does not come before we go, which I am sure he will."

Maggie tried to think so too, and her sleep that night was sweeter
than it had been before for many weeks--but the next day came, and the
next, and Maggie's eyes grew dim with watching and with tears, for up
and down the road, as far as she could see, there came no trace of him
for whom she waited.

"I might have known it; it was foolish of me