time to spend in this sorrowful employment,—that she must prepare to go away from him, as her heart said, forever. "Forever!" it repeated. "This, then, is the close of it all,—the miserable end!" With that thought she shut her slender hand, and struck it down hard, the blood almost starting from the driven nails and bruised flesh, unheeding; though a little space thereafter she smiled, beholding it, and muttered, "So—the drop of savage blood is telling at last!"

Presently she was gone. It was a pleasant spot to which her aunt took her,—one of the pretty little villages scattered up and down the long sweep of the Hudson. Pleasant people they were too,—these English friends of Mrs. Lancaster,—who made her welcome, but did not intrude upon the solitude which they saw she desired.

Sabbath morning they all went to the little chapel, and left her, as she wished, alone. Being so alone, after hearing their adieus, she went up to her room and sat down to devote herself once again to sorrowful contemplation,—not because she would, but because she must.

Poor girl! the bright spring sunshine streamed over her where she sat;—not a cloud in the sky, not a dimming of mist or vapor on all the hills, and the broad river-sweep which, placid and beautiful, rolled along; the cattle far off on the brown fields rubbed their silky sides softly together, and gazed through the clear atmosphere with a lazy content, as though they saw the waving of green grass, and heard the rustle of wind in the thick boughs, so soon to bear their leafy burden. Stillness everywhere,—the blessed calm that even nature seems to feel on a sunny Sabbath morn. Stillness scarcely broken by the voices, mellowed and softened ere they reached her ear, chanting in the village church, to some sweet and solemn music, words spoken in infinite tenderness long ago, and which, through all the centuries, come with healing balm to many a sore and saddened heart: "Come unto me," the voices sang,—"come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

"Ah, rest," she murmured while she listened,—"rest"; and with the repetition of the word the fever died out of her eyes, leaving them filled with such a look, more pitiful than any tears, as would have made a kind heart ache even to look at them; while her figure, alert and proud no longer, bent on the window ledge in such lonely and weary fashion that a strong arm would have involuntarily stretched out to shield it from any hardness or blow that might threaten, though the owner thereof were a stranger.

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