he latter stood Charley, sufficiently elevated by its
height to see into the room. His gaze was directed eagerly and
solicitously upon her.

She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.

"You have taken them away?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why did you do it?"

"I saw you looking at them too long."

"What has that to do with it?"

"You have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want
to live."

"Well?"

"And I could not bear to leave them in your way. There was meaning
in your look at them."

"Where are they now?"

"Locked up."

"Where?"

"In the stable."

"Give them to me."

"No, ma'am."

"You refuse?"

"I do. I care too much for you to give 'em up."

She turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony
immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming
something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments
of despair. At last she confronted him again.

"Why should I not die if I wish?" she said tremulously. "I have made
a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of it--weary. And now you have
hindered my escape. O, why did you, Charley! What makes death painful
except the thought of others' grief?--and that is absent in my case,
for not a sigh would follow me!"

"Ah, it is trouble that has done this! I wish in my very soul that he
who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to
say it!"

"Charley, no more of that. What do you mean to do about this you have
seen?"

"Keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it again."

"You need not fear. The moment has passed. I promise." She then went
away, entered the house, and lay down.

Later in the afternoon her grandfather returned. He was about to
question her categorically; but on looking at her he withheld his
words.

"Yes, it is too bad to talk of," she slowly returned in answer to his
glance. "Can my old room be got ready for me tonight, grandfather? I
shall want to occupy it again."

He did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left her husband, but
ordered the room to be prepared.

V

An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated

Charley's attentions to his former mistress were unbounded. The only
solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts to relieve hers. Hour
after hour he considered her wants: he thought of her presence there
with a sort of gratitude, and, while uttering imprecations on the
cause of her unhappiness, in som