ing no care and betraying none. He appeared to take it for
granted that Grace saw an improvement, but he recognized it by nothing
explicit till he rose and said, "I think I will leave Mrs. Maynard with
you to-night, Dr. Breen."

The sick woman's eyes turned to him imploringly from her pillow,
and Grace spoke the terror of both when she faltered in return, "Are
you--you are not going home?"

"I shall sleep in the house."

"Oh, thank you!" she cried fervently.

"And you can call me if you wish. But there won't be any occasion.
Mrs. Maynard is very much better." He waited to give, in a sort of
absent-minded way, certain directions. Then he went out, and Grace sank
back into the chair from which she had started at his rising, and wept
long and silently with a hidden face. When she took away her hands and
dried her tears, she saw Mrs. Maynard beckoning to her. She went to the
bedside.

"What is it, dear?" she asked tenderly.

"Stoop down," whispered the other; and as Grace bowed her ear Mrs.
Maynard touched her cheek with her dry lips. In this kiss doubtless
she forgave the wrong which she had hoarded in her heart, and there
perverted into a deadly injury. But they both knew upon what terms the
pardon was accorded, and that if Mrs. Maynard had died, she would have
died holding Grace answerable for her undoing.

IX.

In the morning Dr. Mulbridge drove back to Corbitant, and in the evening
Libby came over from New Leyden with Maynard, in a hired wagon. He was
a day later than his wife had computed, but as she appeared to have
reflected, she had left the intervening Sunday out of her calculation;
this was one of the few things she taxed herself to say. For the rest,
she seemed to be hoarding her strength against his coming.

Grace met him at a little distance from the house, whither she had
walked with Bella, for a breath of the fresh air after her long day in
the sick-room, and did not find him the boisterous and jovial Hoosier
she had imagined him. It was, in fact, hardly the moment for the
expression of Western humor. He arrived a sleep-broken, travel-creased
figure, with more than the Western man's usual indifference to dress;
with sad, dull eyes, and an untrimmed beard that hung in points and
tags, and thinly hid the corners of a large mouth. He took her hand
laxly in his, and bowing over her from his lank height listened to her
report of his wife's state, while he held his little girl on his left
arm, an