thoughts and
memories were gathering up from the background where they had lain
dormant if extant all these years, and through her solitude were
getting a vitality which made her stand still in a kind of breathless
agony, wondering where they would lead her and in what they would end.
At times such a burning sense of sin would flash over her that she
felt as if she must confess that hideous fact of her girlish past. It
seemed so shameful that she should be living there among the rest, a
criminal with the innocent, and not tell them what she was. Then the
instinct of self-preservation would carry it over her conscience, and
she would press back her thoughts and go out, as to-day, to cool her
feverish blood, and grow calm to bear and strong to hold the heavy
burden which she had fashioned by her own mad deed and laid for life
on her own hands.

If only the ladies had not insisted so strongly on mamma's personality
in heaven! if only they had not lighted up her imagination, her
loyalty, by this tremendous torch of faith and love! How bitterly she
regretted the childish fanaticism which had made her imagine herself
the providence of that beloved memory, the avenger of those shadowy
wrongs! Oh, if she could undo the past and call madame back to life!
She would kiss her now, and even call her mamma if it would please her
and papa. So she stood on the hillock facing the north-west, thinking
these things and regretting in vain.

As Edgar came riding by his large black hound dashed off to Leam and
barked furiously, all four paws planted on the ground as if preparing
for a spring. The beast had probably no malice, and might have meant
it merely as his method of saying, "Who are you?" but he looked
formidable, and Leam started back and cried, "Down, dog! go away!" in
a voice half angry and half afraid.

Then Edgar saw the face, and knew who she was. He rode across the
turf, calling off his dog, and came up to her. It was an opportunity,
and Edgar Harrowby was a man who knew how to take advantage of
opportunities. It was in his creed to thank Providence for favorable
chances by making the most of them, and this was a chance of which it
would be manifestly ungrateful not to make the most. It was far more
picturesque to meet her for the first time, as now, on the wild moor
on a gusty gray November day, than in the gloomy old drawing-room at
the Hill. It gave a flavor of romance and the forbidden which was not
without its value i