bed they had laid the fainting girl when they had found
her by her father's death-bed.

The young wife shivered suddenly. "He died of his unhappy marriage,"
she had once heard Uncle Henry say--in a low tone, but she had
understood him nevertheless.

Mamma did not love him, she had loved another man, and she had told him
so once, when they were quarreling about some trifle.

"I should have been happier with the other one--I liked him at any
rate, but--he was poor."

Gertrude understood it all now; she had her father's character, she was
proud, too. Oh, those gloomy years when she was growing to understand
what sunshine was wanting in the house!

"If it were not for the children," he had said once, angrily, "I would
have put an end to it long ago."

O what a torture it is when two people are bound together by the law of
God and man who would yet gladly put a whole world between them!
Unworthy? Immoral?

Had not her father done well when he went voluntarily? But ah, how hard
was the going when one loves! How then? Love and esteem belong
together--ah, it was imagination, all imagination!

She grew suddenly a shade paler; she thought how her father had loved
her and she thought of the little cradle in the attic at home. Thank
God, it was only a dream, a wish, a nothing, and yet--Oh, this
sickening dread!

She went towards the bed, she was so tired; she nestled her head in the
pillow, drew up the coverlid and closed her eyes. And then she seemed
to be always seeing and hearing the words that she had written to-day
to leave on his writing-table. And she murmured, "Have compassion on
me, let me go! Do not follow me, leave me the only place that belongs
to me!"

The housekeeper brought some hot milk and she drank it. She would go to
sleep, she said, but she could not sleep. She was always listening; she
thought she heard horses' hoofs and carriage wheels. Ah, not that, not
that!

Hour after hour passed and still she lay motionless; she had no longer
the strength to move. Why can one not die when one will?

The noon-day bell was ringing in the village when a carriage drove up
and soon after steps came up the stairs.

Thank God, it was not he!

Uncle Henry put his troubled face in at the door.

"Really," he said, "you are here then! But why, child, why?"

She had risen hastily and now stood before the little old gentleman.

"You bring me an answer, uncle?"

"Yes, to be sure. But I would rather far do someth