by the fall, flew partly in shining particles against
her dress, and partly lay scattered on the snowy ground. A fragment
rebounded, and glanced upon her forehead, making the blood-drops trickle
down her cheek. Wiping them off with her handkerchief, she gazed on the
crimson stain, and remembering her bleeding fingers when they parted,
and Miss Thusa's legend of the Maiden's Bleeding Heart, she
involuntarily put her hand to her own to feel if it were not bleeding,
too. All the strong and passionate love which had been smouldering
there, beneath the ashes of sullen pride, struggling for vent, heaved
the bosom where it was concealed. And with this love there blazed a
fiercer flame, indignation against her father for the prohibition that
raised a barrier between herself and Bryant Clinton. One moment she
resolved to rush down stairs and give utterance to the vehement anger
that threatened to suffocate her by repression; the next, the image of a
stern, rebuking father, inflexible in his will, checked her rash design.
Had she been in his presence and heard the interdiction repeated, her
resentful feelings would have burst forth; but, daring as she was, there
was some restraining influence over her passions.

Then she reflected that parental prohibitions were as the gossamer web
before the strength of real love,--that though Clinton was forbidden to
meet her in her father's house, the world was wide enough to furnish a
trysting-place elsewhere. Let him but breathe the word, she was ready to
fly with him from zone to zone, believing that even the frozen regions
of Lapland would be converted into a blooming Paradise by the magic of
his love. But what if he loved her no more, as Helen had asserted? What
if Helen had indeed supplanted her?

"No, no!" cried she, aloud, shrinking from the dark and evil thoughts
that came gliding into her soul; "no, no, I will not think of it! It
would drive me mad!"

It was past midnight when Louis returned, and the light still burned in
Mittie's chamber. The moment she heard his step on the flag-stones, she
sprang to the window and opened it. The cold night air blew chill on her
feverish and burning face, but she heeded it not.

"Louis," she said, "wait. I will come down and open the door."

"It is not fastened," he replied; "it is not likely that I am barred out
also. Go to bed, Mittie--for Heaven's sake, go to bed."

But, throwing off her slippers, she flew down stairs, the carpet
muffling