on. She would most likely have found the
young man she thought she was in love with in the days gone by a very
commonplace person now. The heart which she had considered dead to the
world had, even before that stormy night in the old house, begun
to expostulate against its owner's mistake, by asserting a fair
indifference to that portion of its past history. And now, to her large
nature the simplicity, the suffering, the patience, the imagination, the
grand poverty of Ericson, were irresistibly attractive. Add to this
that she became his nurse, and soon saw that he was not indifferent to
her--and if she fell in love with him as only a full-grown woman can
love, without Ericson's lips saying anything that might not by Love's
jealousy be interpreted as only of grateful affection, why should she
not?

And what of Marjory Lindsay? Ericson had not forgotten her. But the
brightest star must grow pale as the sun draws near; and on Ericson
there were two suns rising at once on the low sea-shore of life whereon
he had been pacing up and down moodily for three-and-twenty years,
listening evermore to the unprogressive rise and fall of the tidal
waves, all talking of the eternal, all unable to reveal it--the sun of
love and the sun of death. Mysie and he had never met. She pleased his
imagination; she touched his heart with her helplessness; but she gave
him no welcome to the shrine of her beauty: he loved through admiration
and pity. He broke no faith to her; for he had never offered her any
save in looks, and she had not accepted it. She was but a sickly plant
grown in a hot-house. On his death-bed he found a woman a hiding-place
from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in
a weary land! A strong she-angel with mighty wings, Mary St. John came
behind him as he fainted out of life, tempered the burning heat of the
Sun of Death, and laid him to sleep in the cool twilight of her glorious
shadow. In the stead of trouble about a wilful, thoughtless girl, he
found repose and protection and motherhood in a great-hearted woman.

For Ericson's sake, Robert made some effort to preserve the acquaintance
of Mr. Lindsay and his daughter. But he could hardly keep up a
conversation with Mr. Lindsay, and Mysie showed herself utterly
indifferent to him even in the way of common friendship. He told her of
Ericson's illness: she said she was sorry to hear it, and looked miles
away. He could never get within a certain atm