n,--of whom any man might justly be proud."

Fearful that she had already incurred his displeasure, and unwilling
to meet his eye, she turned quickly and made her escape through the
open door.

In the bright glow of that lovely spring day, the calm face of Ulpian
Grey seemed scarcely older than on the afternoon when he came to make
the farm his home; and though paler, and ciphered over by the leaden
finger of anxiety, it indexed little of the long, fierce strife, that
conscience had waged with heart.

Lighter and more impulsive natures expend themselves in spasmodic and
violent ebullitions, but the great deep of this man's serene character
had never stirred, until the one mighty love of his life had lashed it
into a tempest that tossed his hopes like sea-froth, and finally
engulfed the only rosy dream of wedded happiness that had ever flushed
his quiet, solitary, sedate existence.

Having kept his heart in holy subjection to the law of Christ, he did
not quail and surrender when the great temptation rose, bearing the
banner of insurrection; but sternly and dauntlessly fronted the shock,
and kept inviolate the citadel, garrisoned by an invincible and
consecrated will.

The yearning tenderness of his strong, tranquil soul, had enfolded
Mrs. Carlyle, drawing her more and more into the penetralia of his
affection; but from the hour in which he learned her history he had
torn away the clinging tendrils of love,--had endeavored to expel her
from his heart, and to stifle its wail for the lost idol.

Week after week, month after month, he had driven every day within
sight of the blue smoke that curled above the trees at "Solitude," but
never even for an instant checked his horse to gaze longingly towards
the Eden whence he had voluntarily exiled himself.

There were hours when his heart ached for the sight of that white face
he had loved so madly, and the sound of the mournfully sweet
voice,--and his hand trembled at the recollection of the soft, cold,
snowy fingers, that once thrilled his palms; but he treated these
utterances of his heart as mercilessly as the hunter who cheers his
dogs in the chase where the death-cry of the victim rings above bark
and halloo.

No wall of division, no sea of separation, would have proved so
effectual, so insurmountable, as his own firm resolve that his earthly
path should never cross that of one whom God's statutes had set apart
until death annulled the decree. In this torturing or