a boat borne by the river's tide to sea, away from her living joy.
The breast of Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she had
clear knowledge of her cousin's heart; how it scoffed at its base love,
and unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to the
world and what it would give her to fill the void; how externally the
lake was untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how within
there pressed a flood against an iron dam. Evan, too, she saw. The
Countess was right in her judgement of Juliana's love. Juliana looked
very little to his qualities. She loved him when she thought him guilty,
which made her conceive that her love was of a diviner cast than Rose
was capable of. Guilt did not spoil his beauty to her; his gentleness
and glowing manhood were unchanged; and when she knew him as he was,
the revelation of his high nature simply confirmed her impression of his
physical perfections. She had done him a wrong; at her death news would
come to him, and it might be that he would bless her name. Because she
sighed no longer for those dear lips and strong arms to close about her
tremulous frame, it seemed to her that she had quite surrendered him.
Generous to Evan, she would be just to Rose. Beneath her pillow she
found pencil and paper, and with difficulty, scarce seeing her letters
in the brown light, she began to trace lines of farewell to Rose. Her
conscience dictated to her thus, 'Tell Rose that she was too ready to
accept his guilt; and that in this as in all things, she acted with the
precipitation of her character. Tell her that you always trusted, and
that now you know him innocent. Give her the proofs you have. Show that
he did it to shield his intriguing sister. Tell her that you write this
only to make her just to him. End with a prayer that Rose may be happy.'

Ere Juliana had finished one sentence, she resigned the pencil. Was it
not much, even at the gates of death, to be the instrument to send Rose
into his arms? The picture swayed before her, helping her weakness.
She found herself dreaming that he had kissed her once. Dorothy, she
remembered, had danced up to her one day, to relate what the maids of
the house said of the gentleman--(at whom, it is known, they look with
the licence of cats toward kings); and Dorothy's fresh careless mouth
had told how one observant maid, amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan,
to a companion of her sex, that, 'he was the only gentleman who gav