nce," he went on, "see all the admirable
details of her plan; see how beautifully they were imagined, how
carefully and intelligently elaborated. She who conceived them longed to
see beauty everywhere--it was her dearest wish to bestow it on her
people here. And her ardent imagination outran the bounds of practical
possibility. We cannot give you, in its completeness, the beautiful
thing she had imagined--the great terraces, the marble porches, the
fountains, lily-tanks, and cloisters. But you will see that, wherever it
was possible--though in humbler materials, and on a smaller scale--we
have faithfully followed her design; and when presently you go through
this building, and when, hereafter, you find health and refreshment and
diversion here, I ask you to remember the beauty she dreamed of giving
you, and to let the thought of it make her memory beautiful among you
and among your children...."

Justine had listened with deepening amazement. She was seated so close
to her husband that she had recognized the blue-print the moment he
unrolled it. There was no mistaking its origin--it was simply the plan
of the gymnasium which Bessy had intended to build at Lynbrook, and
which she had been constrained to abandon owing to her husband's
increased expenditure at the mills. But how was it possible that Amherst
knew nothing of the original purpose of the plans, and by what mocking
turn of events had a project devised in deliberate defiance of his
wishes, and intended to declare his wife's open contempt for them, been
transformed into a Utopian vision for the betterment of the Westmore
operatives?

A wave of anger swept over Justine at this last derisive stroke of fate.
It was grotesque and pitiable that a man like Amherst should create out
of his regrets a being who had never existed, and then ascribe to her
feelings and actions of which the real woman had again and again proved
herself incapable!

Ah, no, Justine had suffered enough--but to have this imaginary Bessy
called from the grave, dressed in a semblance of self-devotion and
idealism, to see her petty impulses of vindictiveness disguised as the
motions of a lofty spirit--it was as though her small malicious ghost
had devised this way of punishing the wife who had taken her place!

Justine had suffered enough--suffered deliberately and unstintingly,
paying the full price of her error, not seeking to evade its least
consequence. But no sane judgment could ask her to