ven to you, Maria, if it were not a duty to
him. You must not be left to suppose from my silence that he is to
blame, as you think he is. I suffer from no sense of injury from him.
I got over that, long ago."

Maria would not say, as she thought, "You had to get over it, then?"

"It makes me very unhappy to think how he is suffering,--how much more
he has to bear than I; so much more than the separation and the blank.
He cannot trust me as I trusted him; and that is, indeed, to be without
consolation."

"Do men ever trust as women do?"

"Yes, Edward does. If he were to go to India for twenty years, he would
know, as certainly as I should, that Hester would be widowed in every
thought till his return. And the time will come when Philip will know
this as certainly of me. It is but a little while yet that I have
waited, Maria; but it does sometimes seem a weary waiting."

Maria took her friend's hand, in token of the sympathy she could not
speak,--so much of hopelessness was there mingled with it.

"I know you and others think that this waiting is to go on for ever."

"No, love; not so."

"Or that a certainty which is even worse will come some day. But it
will be otherwise. His love can no more be quenched or alienated by the
slanders of a wicked woman, than the sun can be put out by an eclipse,
or sent to enlighten another world, leaving us mourning."

"You judge by your own soul, Margaret; and that should be a faithful
guide. You judge him by your own soul,--and how much by this?" she
added, with a smile, fixing her eyes on the turquoise ring, which was
Philip's gift, and which, safely guarded, was on a finger of the hand
she held.

Margaret blushed. She could not have denied, if closely pressed, that
some little tinge of the Eastern superstition had entered into this
sacred ring, and lay there, like the fire in the opal. She could not
have denied, that, when she drew it on every morning, she noted with
satisfaction that its blue was as clear and bright as ever.

"How is it that this ring is still here?" asked Maria. "Is it possible
that he retains gifts of yours? Yet, I think, if he did not, this ring
would not be on your finger."

"He does keep whatever I gave him. Thank God! he keeps them. This is
one of my greatest comforts: it is the only way I have left of speaking
to him. But if it were not so, this ring would still be where it is. I
would not give it up. I am not altered. I am not