h his hat drawn over his eyes, went
straight to the library. He kissed the face of the dead passionately and
his sob and violent burst of sorrow told his child of his arrival. She
lifted her rigid face, and extended her arms pleadingly.

"Father! father! here, at least, you will forgive me!"

He turned from her sternly, and answered, with bitter emphasis--

"I will not! But for _you_, he would have been different, and this would
never have happened."

"Father, I have asked for love and pardon for the last time."

She bent down and kissed her cousin, and, with a hard, bitter expression in
her countenance, went up to her own room, locking out Paragon and old
Nellie, who followed cautiously at her heels.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FEVER

It was a cold afternoon in November--

"And Autumn, laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves,"

had kindled her forest conflagration. Golden maples and amber-hued
cherries, crimson dog-woods and scarlet oaks shook out their flame-foliage
and waved their glowing boughs, all dashed and speckled, flecked and rimmed
with orange and blood, ghastly green, and tawny brown. The smoky
atmosphere, which had hung all day in purple folds around the distant
hills, took a golden haze as the sun sank rapidly; and to Irene's gaze
river and woodland, hill-side and valley, were brimmed with that weird
"light which never was on sea or land." Her almost "Brahminical" love of
nature had grown with her years, but a holier element mingled with her
adoration now; she looked beyond the material veil of beauty, and bowed
reverently before the indwelling Spiritual Presence. Since Hugh's death,
nearly a year before, she had become a recluse, availing herself of her
mourning dress to decline all social engagements, and during these months a
narrow path opened before her feet, she became a member of the church which
she had attended from infancy, and her hands closed firmly over her
life-work.

Sorrow and want hung out their signs among the poor of W----, and here,
silently, but methodically, she had become, not a ministering angel
certainly, but a generous benefactress, a noble, sympathetic friend--a
counsellor whose strong good sense rendered her advice and guidance
valuable indeed. By a system of rigid economy she was enabled to set apart
a small portion of money, which she gave judiciously, superintending its
investment; kind, hopeful words she scattered like sunshine over every
thr