r;
their lot it would be to know the ecstasy of whispered vows, to give and
to receive that happiness which is not to be named lest the gods become
envious. Voices singing together in the class practice which had ever
been a weariness, stirred her to a passion of delight; it was the choral
symphony of love's handmaidens. Did they see a change in her? Emily
fancied that the elder girls looked at each other and smiled and
exchanged words in an undertone--about her.

It was well to have told Wilfrid all her secrets, yet in the impatience
of waiting she had tremors of misgiving; would he, perchance, think as
she so long had thought, that to speak to anyone, however near, of that
bygone woe and shame was a sin against the pieties of nature, least of
all excusable when committed at the bidding of her own desires? He would
never breathe to her a word which could reveal such a thought, but
Wilfrid, with his susceptibility to the beautiful in character, his
nature so intensely in sympathy with her own, might more or less
consciously judge her to have fallen from fidelity to the high ideal.
Could he have learnt the story of her life, she still persevering on her
widowed way, would he not have deemed her nobler? Aid against this
subtlety of conscience rose in the form of self-reproof administered by
that joyous voice of nature which no longer timidly begged a hearing,
but came as a mandate from an unveiled sovereign. With what right, pray,
did she desire to show in Wilfrid's eyes as other than she was? That
part in life alone becomes us which is the very expression of ourselves.
What merit can there be in playing the votary of an ascetic conviction
when the heart is bursting with its stifled cry for light and warmth,
for human joy, for the golden fruit of the tree of life? She had been
sincere in her renunciation; the way of worthiness was to cherish a
sincerity as complete now that her soul flamed to the bliss which fate
once more offered her.

The hours passed slowly; how long the night would be if Wilfrid neither
wrote to her nor came. But he had written; at eight o'clock the glad
signal of the postman drew her to the door of her room where she stood
trembling whilst someone went to the letter-box, and--oh, joy! ascended
the stairs. It was her letter; because her hands were too unsteady to
hold it for reading, she knelt by a chair, like a child with a new
picture-book, and spread the sheet open. And, having read it twice, she