every expression,
ears that weighed eagerly every inflection; for she was hearing the
story of another's love, and it did not seem strange to her that a
woman, old, red-faced, and fat, should be telling it.

Yet there were times when she wept till she was exhausted; when all her
girlhood was drowned in the overflow of her eyes; when there was a
sense of irrevocable loss upon her. Then it was, in her fear of soul
and pitiful loneliness, that her lover--the man she would have died
for--seemed to have deserted her. Then it was that a sudden hatred
against him rose up in her--to be swept away as swiftly as it came by
the memory of his broken tale of love, his passionate words: "I have
never loved any one but you in all my life, Rosalie." And also, there
was that letter from Chaudiere, which said that in the hour when the
greatest proof of his love must be given he would give it. Reading
the letter again, hatred, doubt, even sorrow, passed from her, and her
imagination pictured the hour when, disguise and secrecy ended, he would
step forward before all the world and say: "I take Rosalie Evanturel to
be my wife." Despite the gusts of emotion that swayed her at times, in
the deepest part of her being she trusted him completely.

When she reached the hospital this Sunday afternoon her step was quick,
her smile bright--though she had not been to confession as was her duty
on Easter day. The impulse towards it had been great, but her secret was
not her own, and the passionate desire to give relief to her full heart
was overborne by thought of the man. Her soul was her own, but this
secret of their love was his as well as hers. She knew that she was the
only just judge between.

Soon after she entered the ward, the chief surgeon said that all that
could be done for her father had now been done, and that as M. Evanturel
constantly asked to be taken back to Chaudiere (he never said to die,
though they knew what was in his mind), he might now make the journey,
partly by river, partly by land. It seemed to the delighted and excited
Rosalie that Jo Portugais had been sent to her as a surprise, and that
his team of dogs was to take her father back.

She sat by her father's bed this beautiful, wonderful Sunday afternoon,
and talked cheerfully, and laughed a little, and told M. Evanturel of
the dogs, and together they looked out of the window to the far-off
hills, in their golden purple, beyond which, in the valley of the
Chaudiere, w