with different men!"

She had nothing more to say about it, Madame Jacobus had told him; yet,
standing there in the quiet cold light, within a few steps of the closed
door behind which was her husband, her feet on the floor of the house
she had worked hard to buy him, the child in her arms she would give him
to-morrow, she thought she had touched in this hour the very depth and
height of life.

"It is worth all the pain that's gone,--it's worth it all," she said
again and again, pressing the boy so closely that he cried. When she
turned to the window, the cold and gathering night somehow made her home
more real, the future alive with great and good possibilities.

Yet it was a foreboding, revengeful night. Outside the little panes of
the passage-window she could see the gray walls of the house and the
bare trunks of the trees darken and draw apart in the dull light. There
was no mellowness in the outlines of rocks or beach: they loomed up
harsh and threatening. From the low, dingy horizon came at intervals
subdued soughs of wind that broke on the projecting headlands with a
muffled cry. The floor grew chilly to her feet; the strip of carpet
shook in the gusts; and the passage was dark, but for a cheerful glimmer
of light under the Professor's door. Charlotte went shivering with her
baby into the nurse's room; and when she had watched it safe into its
cradle, came out, going again through the hall to the library. As she
touched the door-handle, she checked herself in humming some song,
growing colorless as she thought what it was,--an old ditty with which
she used to lull little Tom to sleep, but never had sung since then. But
in a moment a curious smile came on her lips. "That is all right," she
said, opening the door. From that moment her little boy and poor Tom,
dead in the city graveyard yonder, were as one to the mother: she nursed
them in her heart together.

One word as to the plan of the house, for the better understanding of
what followed. It was niched, as we said, into a cove of rocks, open
only to the sea. In spite of all the croaking of the wreckers, the
highest tide had never yet approached nearer than to ten feet sheer
descent from the foundation-stones. On the ground-floor was a room
appropriated by the Captain, filled with his bunk, fishing-nets, guns,
and other trumpery, and the kitchen and offices; above were the library
and dining-room; and on the third floor three bed-chambers.

M. Jacobus sat