searching for some lost good; while, as time lengthened and his nerves grew strained by impatient waiting and want of sleep, fears that by his own action he had procured this disappointment began to assail him. He was always over-confident, blundering from too great self-belief. For might it not be that in opening her little treasure-chest, in touching those objects so dear to her dead fingers and dead eyes, in reading her letters—nay, in striving to approach her and establish relations with her at all—he had outraged her delicacy, had, in a sense, assaulted her soul, had been guilty of spiritual insult, as in grosser, material existence a man might assault or insult a woman's person? Had he, unwittingly, transgressed some law obtaining in the world of spirits, in the state of being which lies outside and beyond the Gates of Death, and of which human beings, bound by the conditions of their earthly environment, have as yet no cognisance?—Why should not the mind and heart be sublimated to as exquisite a fineness of texture, in her case, as the body had been? This idea of possible outrage, of unwitting grossness towards her, was horrible to Laurence. It stabbed him with shame, and provoked in him a passionate desire for absolution. If she would only come—only come, that he might implore her pardon, gain forgiveness, or—still better—receive comfortable assurance that he had not sinned!

His restless wanderings brought him at length to the bay-window, and he looked out into the night. The storm had not abated. Dimly he could perceive, in the light streaming outward from the window, the rain-washed steps, the pale balustrades and statues of the garden; the near cypresses, too, bowed and straining in the gale which shrieked across the open lawns and bellowed hoarsely in the woodland like some fierce beast let loose. And Laurence, viewing this tumult and listening to it, suffered further humiliation. He became but a small thing in his own estimation, weak, futile, incapable. For to what, after all, did his force of will and power of compelling events amount? He thought of Armstrong, the level-headed and circumspect Scotch agent; of his uncle, dignified, and even in mortal illness faithful to the clear purposes of his long life. He thought of Virginia, strong in virtue of her very limitations, glittering as a well-cut jewel, concrete, complete. All these persons occupied a definite place, served, in their degree, a definite end. Whereas, for himself, was he not the veriest sport of nature and of circumstance, endowed with just sufficient wit, sufficient talent, to court failure in any and every direction? His initiative, that had lately showed god-like, now shrivelled to microscopic proportions; while a further 

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