ke. At last Dr. Eben said feebly:

"Are you Hetty?"

"Yes, Eben," answered Hetty, with a tearless sob. He did not speak
again: still with a strange unseeing look, his eyes roved over her
face, her figure. Then he reached out one hand and touched her gown;
curiously, he lifted the soft gray serge, and fingered it; then he said
again:

"Are you Hetty?"

"Oh, Eben! dear Eben! indeed I am," broke forth Hetty. "Do forgive me.
Can't you?"

"Forgive you?" repeated Dr. Eben, helplessly. "What for?"

"Oh, my God! he thinks we are both dead: what shall I do to rouse him?"
thought Hetty, all the nurse in her coming to the rescue of the woman
and wife.

"For going away and leaving you, Eben," she said in a clear resolute
voice. "I wasn't drowned. I came away."

Dr. Eben smiled; a smile which terrified Hetty more than his look or
voice or words had done.

"Eben! Eben!" she cried, putting both her hands on his shoulders, and
bringing her face close to his. "Don't look like that. I tell you I
wasn't drowned. I am alive: feel me! feel me! I am Hetty;" and she knelt
before him, and laid her arms across his knees. The touch, the grasp,
the warmth of her strong flesh, penetrated his inmost consciousness, and
brought back the tottering senses. His eyes lost their terrifying and
ghastly expression, and took on one searching and half-stern. "You were
not drowned!" he said. "You have not been dead all these years! You went
away! You are not Hetty!" and he pushed her arms rudely from his knees.
Then, in the next second, he had clasped her fiercely in his arms,
crying aloud:

"You are Hetty! I feel you! I know you! Oh Hetty, Hetty, wife, what does
this all mean? Who took you away from me?" And tears, blessed saving
tears, filled Dr. Eben's eyes.

Now began the retribution of Hetty's mistake. In this moment, with her
husband's arms around her, his eyes fixed on hers, the whole cloud of
misapprehension under which she had acted was revealed to her as by a
beam of divine light from heaven. Smitten to the heart by a sudden
and overwhelming remorse, Hetty was speechless. She could only look
pleadingly into his face, and murmur:

"Oh, Eben! Eben!"

He repeated his questions, growing calmer with each word, and with each
moment's increasing realization of Hetty's presence.

"Who took you away?"

"Nobody," answered Hetty. "I came alone."

"Did you not love me, Hetty?" said Dr. Eben in sad tones, struck by a
new fear. This question