inhaled the air, she
disturbed the death-like quiet of the scene. A huge shadow passed
along the ledge of the opposite cottage; her nerves were so unstrung
that she started back as it advanced. It was only their own gentle
cat, whose quick eye recognised its mistress, and without waiting for
invitation, crawled quickly from its eminence, and came rubbing itself
against the glass, and then moved stealthily away, intent upon the
destruction of some unsuspicious creature, who, taught by nature,
believes that with night comes safety.

Almost at the end of the street, the darkness was as it were divided
by a ray of light, that neither flickered nor wavered. What a picture
it brought at once before her!--the pale, lame grandchild of old Jenny
Oram, watching by the dying bed of the only creature that had ever
loved her--her poor deaf grandmother. And the girl's great trouble
was, that the old woman could neither see to read the Word of God
herself, nor hear her when she read it to her; but the lame girl had
no time to waste with grief, so she plied her needle rapidly through
the night-watches, not daring to shed a tear upon the work, or damp
her needle with a sigh. Rose was not as sorry for her as she would
have been at any other time, for individual sorrow has few sympathies;
but the more she thought of the lonely lame girl, the less became her
own trouble, and she might have gone to bed with the consciousness
which, strange to say, brings consolation, that there was one very
near more wretched than herself, had she not seen the form of Edward
Lynne glide like a spectre from beneath the old elm-tree, and stand
before the window. Rose retreated, but still observed him; the moon
was shining on the window, so he must have seen the form, without,
perhaps, being able to distinguish whose it was. Rose watched him
until his silent death-like presence oppressed her heart and brain,
and she closed her eyes to shut out what had become too painful to
look upon. When she looked again, all was sleeping in the moonlight as
before; but he was gone. At the same moment Helen turned restlessly on
her pillow, and sobbed and muttered to herself. Rose felt that pillow
wet with tears. "Helen!" she exclaimed; "Helen, dear Helen! awake!
Awake, Helen!" Her cousin, at length aroused, flung her arms around
her neck; and the proud lip which she had left curled with the
consciousness of beauty and power, quivered and paled, while she sank
awake and wee