striven to
cast the blame upon others that justly belonged to herself; but, like a
brave true-hearted woman, had always been willing to gather up the
night-shade her own hands had planted, with the flowers that God had
still left in her path, without appealing to the world for sympathy or
approval.

This had been Mabel Harrington's life--a coarse woman would, perhaps,
have contented herself with its material comforts, and, without loving,
ceased to desire the capacities of love; the world is full of such. A
wicked woman would have skulked out of her fate through the oily-hinged
portals of the law--a feeble woman would have pined herself to death;
but Mabel was none of these, else my pen would not love to dwell upon
her character, as it does now. She had gone through her life honestly,
cultivating all her good feelings with genial hopefulness, seizing upon
the bad with a firm will, and crowding them back into the darkness,
where they had little chance to grow.

But, sin is like the houseleek planted upon a mossy roof,--after one
fibre has taken root, you find the tough heads springing up everywhere,
fruitful of harsh, thorny-edged leaves, and nothing else. You work
diligently, tear them up by the roots, trample them to pieces, and, when
you think the evil of that first planting is altogether eradicated, up
from the heart of some moss-flower, or creeping out from the curved edge
of the eaves, comes a fresh crop; and you know that the one fibre is
spreading and entangling itself constantly with a hold that you little
dreamed of in the outset.

Mabel had planted her one houseleek, and it was with faithful exertion
she kept it from covering her whole nature. At times it seemed that
every beautiful thing of life would be eaten up and choked to death in
this one tough growth, and at this period of her life, Mabel felt like
sitting down in apathy, while she watched the evil thing thrive.

CHAPTER LXXI.

THE MISSING BOOK.

Mabel sat, hour after hour, week after week, passive, still, and sad,
with a world of sorrow in her face, looking back upon the jewels that
had dropped away from her life, mournfully, but with little wish to
gather them up again. Her husband never asked an explanation of this
strange mood in his wife, but at times he seemed perfectly conscious of
it, and to feel a hidden pleasure in her depression; for, though he did
not love this woman, the old man's vanity was as quick as ever, and it
please