mine and aid in
her punishment.

I paced round the silent house till I came to the private wicket that
led into the avenue; I opened it and entered the familiar path. I had
not been there since the fatal night on which I had learned my own
betrayal. How intensely still were those solemn pines--how gaunt and
dark and grim! Not a branch quivered--not a leaf stirred. A cold dew
that was scarcely a frost glittered on the moss at my feet, No bird's
voice broke the impressive hush of the wood-lands morning dream. No
bright-hued flower unbuttoned its fairy cloak to the breeze; yet there
was a subtle perfume everywhere--the fragrance of unseen violets whose
purple eyes were still closed in slumber.

I gazed on the scene as a man may behold in a vision the spot where he
once was happy. I walked a few paces, then paused with a strange
beating at my heart. A shadow fell across my path--it flitted before
me, it stopped--it lay still. I saw it resolve itself into the figure
of a man stretched out in rigid silence, with the light beating full on
its smiling, dead face, and also on a deep wound just above his heart,
from which the blood oozed redly, staining the grass on which he lay.
Mastering the sick horror which seized me at this sight, I sprung
forward--the shadow vanished instantly--it was a mere optical delusion,
the result of my overwrought and excited condition. I shuddered
involuntarily at the image my own heated fancy had conjured up; should
I always see Guido thus, I thought, even in my dreams?

Suddenly a ringing, swaying rush of sound burst joyously on the
silence--the slumbering trees awoke, their leaves moved, their dark
branches quivered, and the grasses lifted up their green lilliputian
sword-blades. Bells!--and SUCH bells!--tongues of melody that stormed
the air with sweetest eloquence--round, rainbow bubbles of music that
burst upon the wind, and dispersed in delicate broken echoes.

"Peace on earth, good will to men!
Peace--on--earth--good--will--to--men!" they seemed to say over and
over again, till my ears ached with the repetition. Peace! What had I
to do with peace or good-will? The Christ Mass could teach me nothing.
I was as one apart from human life-an alien from its customs and
affections--for me no love, no brotherhood remained. The swinging song
of the chimes jarred my nerves. Why, I thought, should the wild erring
world, with all its wicked men and women, presume to rejoice at the
birth of the Savi