I will watch over them constantly.
They shall never want so long as I live. Will you not believe me, and calm
yourself?"

A ghastly smile trembled over the distorted features, and she bowed her
head in assent.

"Mrs. Davis, don't you feel that you will soon be at rest with God?"

"Yes--I am going home happy--happy."

She closed her eyes and whispered--

"Sing my--hymn--once--more."

Making a great effort to crush her own feelings, Irene sang the simple but
touching words of "Home Again," and though her voice faltered now and then,
she sang it through--knowing, from the expression of the sufferer's face,
that the spirit was passing to its endless rest.

A passionate burst of sorrow from Johnnie followed the discovery of the
melancholy truth, and rising from the floor Irene seated herself on a
chair, taking the child on her lap, and soothing his violent grief. Too
young to realize his loss, he was easily comforted, and after a time grew
quiet. She directed Susan to take him into the next room and put him on his
pallet; and when she had exchanged a few words with Philip's mother about
the disposition of the rigid sleeper, she turned to quit the apartment, and
saw Russell standing on the threshold. Had the dead mother suddenly stepped
before her she would scarcely have been more astonished and startled.

He extended one hand, and hastily taking hers, drew her to the door of the
narrow, dark hall, where the newly-risen moon shone in.

"Come out of this charnel-house into the pure air once more. Do not shrink
back--trust yourself with me this once at least." The brick walls of the
factory rose a hundred yards off, in full view of the Row, and leading her
along the river bank he placed her on one of the massive stone steps of the
building.

"What brought you here to-night, Mr. Aubrey?"

"An unpardonable curiosity concerning your sudden departure--an
unconquerable desire to speak to you once more. I came here overmastered by
an irresistible desire to see you alone, to look at you, to tell you what I
have almost sworn should never pass my lips--what you may consider unmanly
weakness--nay, insanity, on my part. We are face to face at last, man and
woman, with the golden bars of conventionality and worldly distinction
snapped asunder. I am no longer the man whom society would fain flatter, in
atonement for past injustice; and I choose to forget for the time, that you
are the daughter of my bitterest deadly foe--my per