r daughter's hands in some
needlework, felt that the latter's attention had been diverted.

"What is it, dear?" she asked, with an indescribable mellowness of
voice, whose tone thrilled me with a fresh and passionate pity.

"I thought I heard Mr. Allison come in, but he always knocks; besides,
it is not time for him yet." And she sighed.

That sigh went through my heart, rousing new feelings and deeper
terrors; but I had no time to indulge in them, for the mother turned
at the gasp which left my lips, and rising up, confronted me with an
amazement which left her without any ability to speak.

"Who is it, mother?" inquired the blind girl, herself rising and beaming
upon me with the sweetest of looks.

"Let me answer," I ventured, softly. "I am Mr. Allison's wife. I have
come to see if there is anything I can do to make your stay here more
comfortable."

The look that passed over the mother's face warned me to venture no
further in the daughter's presence. Whatever that mother had
suffered, the daughter had experienced nothing but satisfied love and
companionship in these narrow precincts. Her rounded cheeks showed this,
and the indescribable atmosphere of peace and gladness which
surrounded her. As I saw this, and realized the mother's life and the
self-restraint which had enabled her to accept the inevitable without
raising a complaint calculated to betray to the daughter that all was
not as it should be with them, I felt such a rush of awe sweep over me
that some of my fathomless emotion showed in my face; for Mrs. Ransome's
own countenance assumed a milder look, and advancing nearer, she
pointed out a room where we could speak apart. As I moved towards it she
whispered a few words in her daughter's ear, then she rejoined me.

"I did not know Mr. Allison was married," were her first words.

"Madame," said I, "I did not know we were the guests of a lady who
chooses to live in retirement." And opening my vinaigrette, I took out
the bead and the little note which had enwrapped it. "This was my first
warning that my husband was not what I had been led to consider him,"
I murmured. "Mrs. Ransome, I am in need of almost as much pity as
yourself. I have been married just six days."

She gave a cry, looked me wildly in the face, and then sank upon her
knees, lifting up thanks to heaven. "Twenty-four of these notes," said
she; "have I written, and flung upward through that lofty skylight,
weighted by the beads he left