the night air is too damp."

It was her father who spoke, of whose approach she was not aware. He
spoke with an air of authority which he seldom assumed, and taking her
hand, led her into the house.

All the father was moved within him, at the sight of his daughter's
tears. It was the first time that he had seen them flow, or at least he
never remembered to have seen her weep. She had not wept when a child,
by the bed of a dying mother--(and the tears of childhood are usually an
ever-welling spring)--she had not wept over her grave--and now her bosom
was laboring with ill-suppressed sobs. What power had blasted the
granite rock that covered the fountain of her sensibilities?

He entreated her to confide in him, to tell him the cause of her
anguish. If Clinton had been trifling with her happiness, he should not
depart without feeling the weight of parental indignation.

"No man dare to trifle with my happiness!" she exclaimed. "Clinton dare
not do it. Reserve your indignation for real wrongs. Wait till I ask
redress. Have I not a right to weep, if I choose? Helen may shed oceans
of tears, without being called to account. All I ask, all I pray for, is
to be left alone."

Thus the proud girl closed the avenues of sympathy and consolation, and
shut herself up with her own corroding thoughts, for the transient
feelings of humility and self-abasement had passed away with the low,
sweet echoes of the voice of Clinton, leaving nothing but the sullen
memory of her grief. And yet the hope that he still loved her was the
vital spark that sustained and warmed her. His last words breathed so
much of his early tenderness and devotion, his manner possessed all its
wonted fascination.

A calm succeeded, if not peace.

CHAPTER X.

An ancient woman there was, who dwelt
In an old gray collage all alone--
She turned her wheel the live long day--
There was music, I ween, in its solemn drone.
As she twisted the flax, the threads of thought
Kept twisting too, dark, mystic threads--
And the tales she told were legends old,
Quaint fancies, woven of lights and shades.

It is said that absence is like death, and that through its softening
shadow, faults, and even vices, assume a gentle and unforbidding aspect.
But it is not so. Death, the prime minister of God, invests with solemn
majesty the individual on whom he impresses his cold, white seal. The
weakest, meanest being that ever dre