ound restless, but it was not
long before Agnes had so draped the passion-flower that it entirely
concealed her person, and then Fair-Star betook himself entirely to his
mistress. A soul-struggle does not always break forth in words, or
exhaust itself in cries. The heart has a still small voice, which God
recognizes the more readily, because it is like his own.

Mabel came with no rush of stormy passion before the Lord. The very
force of her anguish was laid aside as she bowed her proud head, and
meekly besought strength to suffer and be still--to struggle for the
right. Now and then her clasped hands were uplifted, once the spy on the
balcony caught a glimpse of her face. It was luminous and lovely, spite
of the anguish to be read there.

At last she arose, and seating herself, remained for some time in
thoughtful silence, her arms folded on her bosom, her eyes full of
troubled light, looking afar off, as if she were following with her eyes
the angels that had been gathering over her as she knelt.

After awhile, Mabel arose, and walking across the room more composedly,
unlocked a little escritoir of ebony, from which she drew forth a book
bound in white vellum, and embossed with gold. Seating herself at the
escritoir, she began to search among the trinkets attached to her
chatelaine for a small key, which she inserted in a little heart beset
with rubies, which locked the golden clasps of the book.

All this time Agnes Barker was watching each movement of her
benefactress with the eyes of a serpent. She saw the tiny heart fly
open, and the manuscript pages of the book exposed. She saw Mrs.
Harrington turn these pages, now slowly, now hurriedly--reading a line
here, a sentence there, and more than once two or three pages together.
Sometimes her fine eyes were full of tears. Sometimes they were
reverently uplifted to Heaven, as if seeking strength or comfort there;
but more frequently she pursued those pages with a sad thoughtfulness,
full of dignity.

After she had been reading, perhaps an hour, she dipped a pen into the
standish on her escritoir, and began to write slowly, as if weighing
every word as it dropped from her pen. Then she closed the book, locked
it carefully, and securing it in the escritoir again, walked slowly
toward her bed-chamber, which opened from the boudoir, evidently worn
out and ready to drop down with exhaustion. A slight disturbance in the
passion-vine betrayed that Agnes Barker had changed