r hope, elusive as she is,
often bears a fairer outward mien than the realization to which she
points, and, like a fond deceiver, serves to keep the heart alive till
the first bitterness is overpast, and, schooled in trouble, it can
know her false, and yet remain unbroken.

But sometimes Angela's mood would change, and then, to her strained
and sensitive mind, this dead calm and cessation of events would seem
to resemble that ominous moment when, in tropic seas, the fierce
outrider of the tempest has passed howling away clothed in flying
foam. Then comes a calm, and for a space there is blue sky, and the
sails flap drearily against the mast, and the vessel only rocks from
the violence of her past plunging, while the scream of the sea-bird is
heard with unnatural clearness, for there is no sound nor motion in
the air. Intenser still grows the silence, and the waters almost cease
from tossing; but the seaman knows that presently, with a sudden roar,
the armies of the winds and waves will leap upon him, and that a
struggle for life is at hand.

Such fears, however, did not often take her, for, unlike Arthur, she
was naturally of a hopeful mind, and, when they did, Mr. Fraser would
find means to comfort her. But this was soon to change.

One afternoon--it was Christmas Eve--Angela went down the village to
see Pigott, now comfortably established in the house her long departed
husband had left her. It was a miserable December day, a damp,
unpleasant ghost of a day, and all the sky was packed with clouds,
while the surface of the earth was wrapped in mist. Rain and snow fell
noiselessly by turns; indeed, the only sound in the air was the loud
dripping of water from the trees on the dead leaves beneath. The whole
outlook was melancholy in the extreme. While Angela was in her old
nurse's cottage, the snow fell in earnest for an hour or so, and then
held up again, and when she came out the mist had recovered its
supremacy, and now the snow was melting.

"Come, miss, you must be getting home, or it will be dark. Shall I
come with you a bit?"

"No, thank you, Pigott. I am not afraid of the dark, and I ought to
know my way about these parts. Good-night, dear."

The prevailing dismalness of the scene oppressed her, and she made up
her mind to go and see Mr. Fraser, instead of returning at present to
her lonely home. With this view, leaving the main road that ran
through Rewtham, Bratham, and Isleworth to Roxham, she turned up