one subject.

"No," she at last said. "His power is gone--nearly gone. Oh, if I could
only forget!"

After another pause, during which she seemed to be nerving herself to a
confession, she threw herself into her husband's arms and whispered, "He
is my--uncle."

He was puzzled by the contrast between the violence of her emotion and the
unimportance of this avowal; but as he at least saw that the subject was
painful to her, and as he was all confidence and gentleness, he put no
more inquiries.

"Forget it all," he murmured, caressing her; and with a deep sigh, the
sigh of tired childhood, she answered, "Yes."

The long summer days, laden with happiness for these two, sailed onward to
their sunset havens. After a time, as August drew near its perfumed death,
Alice began to speak of a journey which she should soon be obliged to make
to New York. She _must_ go, she said to Leighton--it was a matter of
property, of business: she would tell him all about it some day. But she
would return soon; that is, she would return as soon as possible: she
would let him know how soon by letter.

When he proposed to accompany her she would not hear of it. To merely go
on with her, she represented, would be a useless expense, and to stay as
long as she might need to stay would injure his practice. In these days
her gayety seemed forced, and more than once he found her weeping; yet so
innocent was he, so simple in his views of life, so candid in soul, that
he suspected no hidden evil: he attributed her agitation entirely to grief
at the prospect of separation.

His own annoyance in view of the journey centred in the fact that his wife
would be absent from him, and that he could not incessantly surround her
with his care. Whether she would be happy, whether she would be treated
with consideration, whether she would be safe from accidents and alarms,
whether her delicate health would not suffer, were the questions which
troubled him. He had the masculine instinct of protection: he was as
virile as he was gentle and affectionate.

The parting was more painful to him than he had expected, because to her
it was such an undisguised and terrible agony.

"You will not forget me?" she pleaded. "You will never, never hate me? You
will always love me? You are the only person who has ever made the world
pleasant to me; and you have made it so pleasant! so different from what
it was! a new earth to me! a star! I will come back as soon as this