r than my dark
spirit is of wings. How can _I_ climb?"

Angela bent low beside her and whispered a few words in her ear, then
rose with a shy blush upon her face. Lady Bellamy shut her eyes.
Presently she opened them again.

"Do not speak any more of this to me now," she said. "I must have
time. The instinct of years cannot be brushed away in a day. If you
knew all the sins I have committed, perhaps you would think too that
for such as I am there is no forgiveness and no hope."

"Whilst there is life there is hope, and, as I once heard Mr. Fraser
say, the real key to forgiveness is the desire to be forgiven."

Again Lady Bellamy shut her eyes and thought, and, when she drew up
their heavy lids, Angela saw that there was something of a peaceful
look about them.

"Stand so," she said to Angela, "there where the light falls upon your
face. That will do; now shall I tell you what I read there? On your
forehead sit resolute power to grasp, and almost measureless capacity
to imagine; in your eyes there is a sympathy not to be guessed by
beings of a coarser fibre; those eyes could look at Heaven and not be
dazzled. Your whole face speaks of a purity and single-mindedness
which I can read but cannot understand. Your mind rejects the
glittering bubbles that men follow, and seeks the solid truth. Your
spirit is in tune with things of light and air; it can float to the
extremest heights of our mental atmosphere, and thence can almost gaze
into the infinite beyond. Pure, but not cold, thirsting for a wider
knowledge, and at times breathing the air of a higher world; resolute,
but patient; proud, and yet humble to learn; holy, but aspiring;
conscious of gifts you do not know how to use, girl, you rise as near
to what is divine as a mortal may. I have always thought so, now I am
sure of it."

"Lady Bellamy!"

"Hush! I have a reason for what I say. I do not ask you to waste time
by listening to senseless panegyrics. Listen: I will tell you what I
have never told to a living soul before. For years I have been a
student of a lore almost forgotten in this country--a lore which once
fully acquired will put the powers that lie hid in Nature at the
command of its possessor, that will even enable him to look beyond
Nature, and perhaps, so far as the duration of existence is concerned,
for awhile to triumph over it. That lore you can learn, though it
baffled me. My intellect and determination enabled me to find the cues
to it, and t