Margaret’s thoughts went back to her own girlhood, when she was no older than the unseen singer. Love’s cup had been at her lips, then, and had been dashed away by a relentless hand.

“O memories that bless and burn! O barren pain and bitter loss! I kiss each bead and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross—Sweetheart! To kiss the cross!”

O barren pain and bitter loss!

To kiss the cross—Sweetheart! To kiss the cross!”

“‘To kiss the cross,’” muttered Margaret, then the tears came in a blinding flood. “Mother! Mother!” she sobbed. “How could you!”

Insensibly, something was changed, and, for the first time, the woman who had gone to her grave unforgiven, seemed not entirely beyond the reach of pardon.

[Pg 120]

[Pg 120]

IX

Rosemary and Mignonette

“

Sweet Lady of my Dreams, it cannot be that you are displeased. If you were, I should know, but do not ask me how!

S

“Day by day, my eyes long for the sight of you; night by night my heart remembers you, for that inner vision does not vanish with the sun. You have unconsciously given me a priceless gift, for wherever I may go, I take you with me—all the grace of you, all the beauty, and all the softness. I have only to close my eyes and then I see.

“But do not think I keep your image always before me, for it is not so. In the work-a-day world, you have no place. You belong, rather, to those fair lands of fancy which lie just beyond the borders of this world and are, or so I think, very near the gleaming gates of Heaven.

[Pg 121]

[Pg 121]

“I am not always at work, but sometimes, even when I am, you come tripping before my eyes, so dainty, so wholly exquisite, that I forget what I am doing, and then I must put you aside. But when the day is done, and the light of it shows only through the 

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