Mrs. Guinness up stairs in her closet gave thanks every day to Heaven for the blessed result: down stairs she nagged and scolded Kitty from morning until night. Peter supposed it was in order to maintain her authority, but it appeared there were other reasons.

"The girl disappoints me, now that one looks at her as a woman," she said to her husband at breakfast one day, while Kitty sat opposite placidly eating a liberal supply of steak and cakes. She looked up inquiringly. "Yes," vehemently, "at your age I could not have eaten a meal a week after I was engaged. Whenever I heard your father's step I was in a tremor from head to toe. You receive Mr. Muller as though you had been married for years. Not a blush! As cool as any woman of the world!"

"But I don't feel any tremor," helping her father to butter.

"It's immodest!"

Kitty blushed now, but whether from anger or shame no one could tell; for she remained silent. She laid down her knife and fork the next moment, however, and rose.

"What I fear is this," said her mother, raising her voice—"Mr. Muller's disappointment. He looks for a womanly, loving wife—"

"And I'm not one?" Poor Kitty stood in the doorway swinging her sun-bonnet. She was just then certainly not a morbid, despairing woman, who had made a terrible mistake: nothing but a scared child whom anybody would have hurried to comfort and humor. "I want to do what's right, I'm sure;" and her red under lip began to tremble and the water to gather in her eyes. She sat down to hear the rest of the lecture, but her mother stopped short. Presently, when the chickens came clucking, she went to mix their meal as usual, very pale and dolorous.

In an hour she put her head in at the shop-window, her eyes sparkling: "There's two new chicks in the corn-bin nest, and they're full-blooded bantams, I'm sure, father."

"She's not fit to be married!" cried Mrs. Guinness excitedly. "She is both silly and unfeeling. God only knows how I came to be the mother of such a child! The great work before her she cares nothing about; and as for Mr. Muller, she doesn't value him as much as a bantam hen. It's her narrow intellect. Her brain is small, as Bluhm said."

It was his wife's conscience twitting her, Peter knew. "I would not be uneasy," he said with a cynical smile. "You can't bring love out of her by that sort of friction." But he was himself uneasy. If Catharine had been gloomy, or even thoughtful, at the prospect of her marriage, he would have cared less. But she came in that very day in glee at the sour, critical looks with which some envious young women of the church had followed her; and when her mother called her up stairs to look at a trunkful of embroidered under-clothing which she had kept for this crisis, he could hear Kitty's delighted chatter and giggle for an hour. Evidently her cup of pleasure was full for that day. Was his little girl vulgar, feeble in both heart and mind, as her mother said?

Kitty was on trial that day. Miss Muller called and swept her off to the Water-cure in the afternoon. She meant to interest her in the Reformatory school for William's sake. She began by explaining the books, and the system of keeping them. "It is my brother's wish you should keep the accounts," she said.

"Accounts! oh yes, of course."

The tone was too emphatic. Miss Muller looked up from the long lines of figures and found Kitty holding her eyes open by force. Evidently she had just had a comfortable nap.

Whereupon Maria began to patiently dilate on the individual cases of the boys to be reformed; and terrible instances they were of guilt and misery.

"She whimpered a little," she said afterward to her brother. "I'll do her justice: she did, a little. But they ought to have brought tears from a log; and the next minute, seeing those wonderful eyes of hers fixed on me with a peculiar thoughtfulness, I asked her what was she thinking of, and found she was studying 'how I did that lovely French twist in my back hair.' No. There's nothing in her—nothing. Not an idea; but that I did not expect. But not even a feeling or principle to take hold of. Take my word, William. You are going to marry fine eyes and pink cheeks. Nothing more."

Mr. Muller cared for nothing more. If there had been an answering hint of fire in eyes or cheeks to the rush of emotion he felt at the sight of them, he would have been content. But Catharine's face was very like a doll's just now—the eyes as bright and unmeaning, the pink as unchanging. In vain he brought her flowers; in vain, grown wiser by love, led her out in the moonlight to walk, or, flushed and quaking himself, read in a shrill, uncertain voice absurd fond little sonnets he had composed to her. Kitty was always attentive, polite and indifferent. She never went to her old seat during the whole summer, never opened one of the old books over which she and Peter used to pore. He showed her a new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress one day, with illustrations: "See what Bell and Daldy have done for our old friend, Catharine."

"This allegory all seems much ado about nothing," she said presently, filliping over the leaves. "Really, I can't see that there is any wilderness in the world, or devils to fight in or out of pits. At least for me."

Speculations on life from Kitty! A month ago she would have gone no farther than the pictures. "There's nothing worse for me than nice dresses and a wedding, and three hundred children to bring up for the Lord, with a smell of beef-and-cabbage over it all. Good gracious! Don't you know I'm joking, father?" seeing his face. She laughed and hugged him, and hugged him again. "As for the children, I love them of course, poor little wretches!"

Peter scowled over her back as she hung on him. Was it sheer silliness? Or had certain doors in her nature never been opened, even enough for her to know all that lay behind them? He pushed her off, holding her by both wrists: "Are you quite willing to marry Mr. Muller? Do you love him? Think what it is to marry without love. For God's sake tell me, Catharine!"

"Yes, I love him. Certainly. Why," kindling into animation, "I've worn his ring for a month. Haven't you seen it?" turning her hand about and looking at the blue turquoise against the white dimples with a delighted chuckle.

There was a storm that evening: the thunder was deafening; the rain dashed heavily against the little square windows of the Book-house. Catharine was alone. As soon as she made sure of that, Peter having gone to the city and her mother to a meeting, she put on her waterproof cloak and overshoes, and sallied out. Not by any means as heroines do who rush out into the tempest to assuage fiercer storms of rage or despair within. But there was something at this time in Kitty's blood which, though it would not warm her cheeks at Mr. Muller's approach, was on fire for adventure. To go out alone in the rain was to the chicken-hearted little simpleton what a whaling-voyage would be to a runaway boy. She came in after an hour drenched to the skin, went up stairs to change her clothes, and ran down presently to cuddle before the fire. Now was the time to think rationally, she thought, her elbow on a chair, her chin pillowed in her soft palm. Here was her marriage just at hand. She had looked forward to marriage all her life. Five minutes she gave to the long-vexed question of whether her wedding-veil should cover her face or not, "It would shade my nose, and in frosty weather my nose always will be red." What queer little hooked noses the Mullers all had! and that reflection swung her mind round to her lover and his love-making, where it rested, until suddenly the fire grew a hazy red blotch and her head began to bob.

"I did not use to be so thick-headed," rousing herself, and staring sleepily at the rain-washed window and the crackling fire. She sang a little hymn to herself, that simplest of all old ditties:

It made her tender and tearful, and brought her feet close to her Saviour, as those other children upon whose head He laid his hands. "I ought to be thankful that I have work for Him," she thought. "How I envied Mary McKean when she sailed to India as a missionary! And here are the heathen ready-made for me," proceeding very earnestly to think over the state of the wretched three hundred. But her head began to nod again, and the fire was suddenly dashed out in blackness. She started up yawning. It was all so dreary! Life—Then and there our wholesome Kitty would have made her first step toward becoming the yearning, misplaced Woman of the Time, but for a knock which came at the door.

There had been an occasional roll of thunder, and the rain beat steadily upon the roof. The first knock failed to rouse her. At the second a man burst in, and stopped as suddenly in the dark end of the shop, shading his eyes from the glare: then he came tiptoeing forward. Even in this abrupt breaking in out of the storm there was something apologetic and deprecating about the man. As he came up, still sheltering his eyes, as though from the surprise of Kitty's loveliness, and not the fire, he had the bearing of a modest actor called before the curtain for bouquets.

"I had not expected—this" with a stage wave of the hand toward Catharine.

Now Kitty's pink ears, as we know, were always pricked for a compliment, and her politeness was apt to carry her over the verge of lying; but she was hardly civil now: she drew coldly back, wishing with all her heart that her lover, fat, simple, pure-minded little Muller, were here to protect her. Yet Mrs. Guinness, no doubt, would have said this man was made of finer clay than the clergyman. Both figure and face were small and delicate: his dress was finical and dainty, from the fur-topped overshoes to the antique seal and the trimming of his gray moustache. He drew off his gloves, holding a white, wrinkled hand to the fire, but Catharine felt the colorless eyes passing over her again and again.

"Your business," she said, "is probably with my father?"

"Your father is Peter Guinness? No. My business hardly deserves the name, in fact," leisurely stopping to smooth and fold the yellow gloves between his palms, in order to prolong his sentences. "It was merely to leave a message for his son, for Hugh Guinness."

"Hugh Guinness is dead."

"Dead!" For an instant the patting of the gloves ceased, and he looked at her steadily; then, with a nod of comprehension, he went on: "Oh, it is not convenient for Hugh to be alive just now? We are old comrades, you see: I know his ways. I know he was in Delaware a year ago. But I have no time now to go to Delaware. The message will no doubt reach him if left with you." He had made the gloves into a square package by this time, and, flattening it with a neat pat or two, put it in his pocket, turning to her with a significant smile.

"Hugh Guinness is dead," said Catharine. "He died in Nicaragua five years ago. Your business with him ended then."

"And yet—" coming a step nearer, "yet if Guinness were in his grave now, I fancy he would think my business of more importance to him than life itself would be." He was talking against time, she saw—talking while he inspected her to see whether she were willfully lying or believed what she said. He was a man who by rule believed the worst: the disagreeable, incredulous smile came back. "These are the days when ghosts walk, as you know." After a moment's pause: "And Hugh may come to rap and write with the rest. So, even admitting that he is dead, it would be safer for you to receive the message. It matters much to him."

"What is it?" she said curiously. "There is no use in wasting so many words about the matter."

"Tell him—" lowering his voice. "No," with a sudden suspicious glance at her. "No need of wasting words, true enough. Give him this. There's an address inside. Tell him the person who sent it waits for him there." He took out of his pocket a small morocco case, apparently containing a photograph, and laid it down on the table.

"Take it back. Hugh Guinness has been dead for years. I will not take charge of it."

"No, he's not dead," coolly buttoning his coat again. "I suppose you believe what you say. But he was in Delaware, I tell you, last October. If he asks about me, tell him I only acted as a messenger in the matter. I've no objection to doing him that good turn."

He nodded familiarly, put on his hat, and went out as suddenly as he had come. When he was gone she heard the rain drenching the walnuts outside, dripping, dripping; the thunder rolled down the valley; the fire crackled and flashed. There, on the table, in the dirty morocco case, lay a Mystery, a tremendous Life-secret, no doubt, of which she, Kitty, held the clue. It was like Pepita when she found the little gold key that unlocked the enchanted rooms. Hugh Guinness living? To be restored to his father? She was in a fever of delight and excitement. When she opened the case she found a beautiful woman's face—a blonde who seemed sixteen to Kitty, but who might be sixty. The Mystery enlarged: it quite filled Kitty's horizon. When she put the case in her pocket, and sat down, with red cheeks and bright eyes, on the rug again, I am sure she did not remember there was a Reform school or a Muller in the world.

At last Peter was heard in the porch, stamping and shaking: "Oh, I'm dry as a toast, Jane, what with the oil-skin and leggings. Yes, take them. Miss Vogdes wants tea in the shop, eh? All right! Why child," turning up her face, "your cheeks burn like a coal. Mr. Muller been here?"

"Oh dear, no!" pushing him into a chair. "Is there nothing to think of but Mullers and marrying?"

She poured out the tea, made room for the plates of cold chicken and toast among the books, and turned the supper into a picnic, as she had done hundreds of times, gossiping steadily all the while. But Mr. Guinness saw that there was something coming.

When the tea was gone she sat down on the wooden bench beside him, leaning forward on his knee: "Father, you promised once to show me before I went away all that you had belonging to—your other child."

Guinness did not speak at once, but sat smoking his cigar. It went out in his mouth. He made a motion to rise once or twice, and sat down again. "To-night, Kitty?"

"Yes, to-night. We are alone."

He got up at last slowly, going to a drawer in the oak cases which she had never seen opened. Unlocking it, he took out one or two Latin school-books, a broken fishing-rod, a gun and an old cap, and placed them before her. It was a hard task she had set him, she saw. He lifted the cap and pointed to a long red hair which had caught in the button, but did not touch it: "Do you see that? That is Hugh's. I found it there long after he was gone. It had caught there some day when the boy jerked the cap off. He was a careless dog! Always jerking and tearing!"

Catharine was silent until he began putting the things back in the drawer: "Father, there's no chance, is there? You could not be mistaken in that report from Nicaragua? You never thought it possible that your son might yet be alive?"

"Hugh's dead—dead," quietly. But his fingers lingered over the book and gun, as though he had been smoothing the grave-clothes about his boy.

"The proof was complete, then?" ventured Kitty.

He turned on her: "Why do you talk to me of Hugh, Catharine? I can tell you nothing of him. He's dead: isn't that enough? Christian folks would say he was a man for whom his friends ought to think death a safe ending. They have told me so more than once. But he was not altogether bad, to my mind." He bent over the drawer now. Kitty saw that he took hold of the red hair, and drew it slowly through his fingers: his face had grown in these few minutes aged and haggard.

"'Behold, how he loved him!'" she thought. He had been the old man's only son. Other men could make mourning for their dead children, talk of them all their lives; but she knew her mother would not allow Peter to even utter his boy's name.

"I'm sure," she said vehemently from where she stood by the fire, "he was not a bad man. I remember Hugh very well, and I remember nothing that was not lovable and good about him;" the truth of which was that she had a vague recollection of a freckle-faced boy, who had tormented her and her kittens day and night, and who had suddenly disappeared out of her life. But she meant to comfort her father, and she did it.

"You've a good, warm heart, Kitty. I did not know that anybody but me remembered the lad."

She snuggled down on the floor beside him, drawing his hand over her hair. Usually there is great comfort in the very touch of a woman like Kitty. But Peter's hand rested passively on her head: her cooing and patting could not touch his trouble to-day.

"Your mother will need you, my dear," he said at last, as soon as that lady's soft steady step was heard in the hall. Kitty understood and left him alone.

"Mother," she said, coming into the chamber where Mrs. Guinness, her pink cheeks pinker from the rain, lay back in her easy-chair, her slippered feet on the fender—"mother, there is a question I wish to ask you."

"Well, Catharine?"

"When did Hugh die? How do you know that he is dead?"

Mrs. Guinness sat erect and looked at her in absolute silence. Astonishment and anger Kitty had expected from her at her mention of the name, but there was a certain terror in her face which was unaccountable.

"What do you know of Hugh Guinness? I never wished that his name should cross your lips, Catharine."

"I know very little. But I have a reason for wishing to know when and how he died. It is for father's sake," she added, startled at the increasing agitation which her mother could not conceal.

Still, Mrs. Guinness did not reply. She was not a superstitious woman: she felt no remorse about her treatment of her stepson. There had been evil tongues, even in the church, to lay his ruined life at her door, and to say that bigotry and sternness had driven him to debauchery and a drunkard's death. She knew she had done her duty: she liked best to think of herself as a mother in Israel. Yet there had always been a dull, mysterious terror which linked Hugh Guinness and Catharine together. It was there he would revenge himself. Some day he would put out his dead hand from the grave to work the child's destruction. She had reasoned and laughed at her own folly in the matter for years. But the belief was there. Now it was taking shape.

She would meet it face to face. She stood up as though she had been going to throttle some visible foe for ever: "I shall tell you the truth, Catharine. Your father has never known it. He believes his son died in Nicaragua fighting for a cause which he thought good. I let him believe it. There was some comfort in that."

"It was not true, then?"

"No." She rearranged the vases on the mantel-shelf, turned over the illuminated texts hanging on the wall, until she came to the one for the day. She was trying to convince herself that Hugh Guinness mattered nothing to her.

"He died," she said at last, "in New York, a reprobate, as he lived."

"But where? how?"

"What can that matter to you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached it he had disappeared. He had lost his last penny at dice."

"Then he is still alive?"

"God forbid! No," correcting herself. "A week later the body of a suicide was recovered off Coney Island and placed in the Morgue. It was horribly mutilated. But I knew Hugh Guinness. I think I see him yet, lying on that marble slab and his eyes staring up at me. It was no doing of mine that he lay there."

"No, mother, I am sure that it was not," gently. "If your conscience reproaches you, I wish he were here that you could try and bring him into the right path at last."

"My conscience does not trouble me. As for Hugh—Heaven forbid that I should judge any man!—but if ever there was a son of wrath predestined to perdition, it was he. I always felt his day of grace must have passed while he was still a child."

Kitty had no answer to this. She went off to bed speedily, and to sleep. An hour or two later her mother crept softly to her bedside and stood looking at her. The woman had been crying.

"Lord, not on her, not on her!" she cried silently. "Let not my sin be laid up against her!" But her grief was short-lived. Hugh was dead. As for his harming Kitty, that was all folly. Meanwhile, Mr. Muller and the wedding-clothes were facts. She stooped over Kitty and kissed her—turned down the sheet to look at her soft blue-veined shoulder and moist white foot. Such a little while since she was a baby asleep in this very bed! Some of the baby lines were in her face still. It was hard to believe that now she was a woman—to be in a few days a wife.

She covered her gently, and stole away nodding and smiling. The ghost was laid.

As for Kitty, she had gone to bed not at all convinced that Hugh Guinness was dead. It was a more absorbing Mystery, that was all. But it did not keep her awake. She did not spin any romantic fancies about him or his dark history. If he were alive, he was very likely as disagreeable and freckle-faced a man as he had been a boy. But the secret was her own—a discovery; a very different affair from this marriage, which had been made and fitted on her by outsiders.

CHAPTER VII.

"Gone! You don't mean that your mother and Mr. Guinness have gone to leave you for a month!" Mr. Muller was quite vehement with annoyance and surprise.

"At least a month," said Catharine calmly. "Mrs. Guinness always goes with my father on his summer journey for books, and this year she has—well, things to buy for me."

It was the wedding-dress she meant, he knew. He leaned eagerly in at the window, where he stood hoping for a blush. But none came. "Purl two and knit one," said Kitty to her crochet.

"I certainly do not consider it safe or proper for you to be left alone," he blustered mildly after a while.

"There is Jane," glancing back at the black figure waddling from the kitchen to the pump.

"Jane! I shall send Maria up to stay with you, Catharine."

"You are very kind! It is so pleasant to be cared for!" with a little gush of politeness and enthusiasm. "But dear Maria finds the house damp. I will not be selfish. You must allow me to be alone."

He looked at her furtively. Was there, after all, an obstinate, unbendable back-bone under the soft feathers of this his nestling dove? He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty would notice that his little imperial had been retrimmed; and he had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price, in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress—too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked like a parrot. "Besides, he is only her stepfather," he reasoned, "and I am to be her husband: she loves me."

Did she love him? The question always brought a pain under his plump chest and neat waistcoat which he could not explain; he thrust it hastily away. But he loitered about the room, thinking how sweet it would be if this childish creature would praise or find fault with buttons or whiskers in her childish way. Kitty, however, crocheted on calmly, and saw neither. The sun was near its setting. The clover-fields stretched out dry and brown in its warm light, to where the melancholy shadows gathered about the wooded creeks.

Mr. Muller looked wistfully out of the window, and then at her. "Suppose you come and walk with me?" he said presently.

Kitty glanced out, and settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair. "It is very pleasant here," smiling.

He thought he would go home: in fact, he did not know what else to do. The room was very quiet, they were quite alone. The evening light fell on Catharine; her hands had fallen on her lap; she was thinking so intently of her Mystery that she had forgotten he was there. How white her bent neck was, with the rings of brown hair lying on it! There was a deeper pink than usual on her face, too, as though her thoughts were pleasant. He came closer, bent over her chair, touched her hair with one chubby finger, and started back red and breathless.

"Did you speak?" said Kitty, looking up.

"I'm going home. I only wanted to say good bye."

"So soon? Good-bye. I shall see you to-morrow, I suppose?" taking up her work.

"Yes, Kitty—"

"Well?"

"I have never bidden you good-bye except by shaking hands. Could I kiss you? I have thought about that every day since you promised to marry me."

The pleasant rose-tinge was gone now: even the soft lips, which were dangerously close, were colorless: "You can kiss me if you want to. I suppose it's right."

The little man drew back gravely. "Never mind; it's no matter. I had made up my mind never to ask for it until you seemed to be able to give me real wifely love."

She started up. "I can do no more than I have done," vehemently. "And I'm tired of hearing of myself as a wife. I'd as soon consider myself as a grandmother."

Mr. Muller waited a moment, too shocked and indignant to speak: then he took up his hat and went to the door. "Good-night, my child," he said kindly, "To-morrow you will be your better self."

Kitty knew nothing of better selves: she only felt keenly that two months ago such rudeness would have been impossible to her. Why was she growing vulgar and weak?

The air stirred the leaves of the old Walnuts outside: the black-coated, dapper figure had not yet passed from under them. He was so gentle and pious and good! Should she run after him? She dropped instead into her chair and cried comfortably till a noise in the shop stopped her, and looking through the dusky books she saw a man waiting. She got up and went in hastily, looking keenly at his face to find how long he had been there, and how much he had seen. It wore, however, an inscrutable gravity.

Most of Peter's old customers sold to themselves during his absence, but this was a stranger. He stood looking curiously at the heaped books and the worn sheepskin-covered chair, until she was close to him: then he looked curiously at her.

"I have had some correspondence with Mr. Guinness about a copy of Quadd's Scientific Catalogues."

"Mr. Guinness is not at home, but he left the book," said Kitty, alertly climbing the steps. Bringing the book, she recognized him as Doctor McCall, who had once before been at the shop when her father was gone. He was a young man, largely built, with a frank, attentive face, red hair and beard, and cordial voice. It was Kitty's nature to meet anybody halfway who carried summer weather about him. "My father hoped you would not come for the book until his return," she said civilly. "Your letters made him wish to see you. You were familiar, he told me, with some old pamphlets of which few customers know anything."

"Probably. I could not come at any other time," curtly, engrossed in turning over the pages of his book. Presently he said, "I will look over the stock if you will allow me. But I need not detain you," glancing at her work in the inner room. Kitty felt herself politely dismissed. Nor, although Doctor McCall stayed for half an hour examining Peter's favorite volumes as he sat on his high office-stool and leaned on his desk, did he once turn his eyes on the dimpling face making a picturesque vignette in the frame of the open window. When he had finished he came to the door. "I will call for the books I have chosen in an hour;" and then bowed distantly and was gone.

He had scarcely closed the gate when the back door creaked, and Miss Muller came in smiling, magnetic from head to foot, as her disciples in Berrytown were used to allege.

"And what is our little dove afraid of in her nest?" pinching Kitty's cheek as though she had been a dove very lately fledged indeed. She had always in fact the feeling when with Kitty that through her she suffered to live and patted on the back the whole ignoble, effete race of domestic women. Catharine caught sight of her satchel, which portended a visit of several days.

"Pray give me your hat and stay with me for tea," she said sweetly.

Miss Muller saw through her stratagem and laughed: "Now, that is just the kind of finesse in which such women delight!" she thought good-humoredly, going into the shop to lay off her hat and cape. The next moment she returned. Her face was bloodless. The muscles of the chin twitched.

"Who has been here?" she cried, sitting down and rubbing her hands violently on her wrists. "Oh, Catharine, who has been here?"

Now Kitty, a hearty eater with a slow brain, and nerves laid quite out of reach under the thick healthy flesh, knew nothing of the hysterical clairvoyant moods and trances familiar to so many lean, bilious American women. She ran for camphor, carbonate of soda and arnica, bathed Miss Muller's head, bent over her, fussing, terrified, anxious.

"Is it a pain? Is it in your stomach? Did you eat anything that disagreed with you?" she cried.

"Eat! I believe in my soul you think of nothing but eating!" trying resolutely to still the trembling of her limbs and chattering of her teeth. "I was only conscious of a presence when I entered that room. Some one who long ago passed out of my life, stood by me again." The tears ran weakly over her white cheeks.

"Somebody in the shop!" Kitty went to it on tiptoe, quaking at the thought of burglars. "There's nobody in the shop. Not even the cat," turning back reassured. "How did you feel the Presence, Maria? See it, or hear it, or smell it?"

"There are other senses than those, you know," pacing slowly up and down the room with the action of the leading lady in a melodrama; but her pain or vision, whatever it was, had been real enough. The cold drops stood on her forehead, her lips quivered, the brown eyes turned from side to side asking for help. "When he is near shall I not know it?" she said with dry lips.

Kitty stole up to her and touched her hand. "I'm so glad if you are in love!" she whispered. "I thought you would think it foolish to care for love or—or babies. I used to care for them both a great deal."

"Pshaw! Now listen to me, child," her step growing steadier. "Oh dear! Haven't you any belladonna? Or coffea? That would set me right at once. As for a husband and children, they are obstructions to a woman—nothing more. If my head was clear I could make you understand. I am a free soul. I have my work to do. Marriage is an accident: so is child-bearing. In nine cases out of ten they hinder a woman's work. But when I meet a kindred soul, higher, purer than mine, I give allegiance to it. My feeling becomes a part of my actual life; it is a spiritual action: it hears and sees by spiritual senses. And then—Ah, there is something terrible in being alone—alone! She called this out loudly, wringing her hands. Kitty gave a queer smile. It was incredible to her that a woman could thus dissect herself for the benefit of another.

"But she's talking for her own benefit," watching her shrewdly. "If there's any acting about it, she's playing Ophelia and Hamlet and the audience all at once.—Was it Doctor McCall you fancied was in the shop?" she asked quietly.

Miss Muller turned, a natural blush dyeing her face and neck: "He has been here then?—Oh, there! there he is!" as the young man came in at the gate. She passed her hands over her front hair nervously, shook down her lace sleeves and went out to meet him. Kitty saw his start of surprise. He stooped, for she was a little woman, and held out both his hands.

"Yes, John, it is I!" she said with a half sob.

"Are you really so glad to see me again, Maria?" She caught his arm for her sole answer, and walked on, nestling close to his side.

"It may be spiritual affinity, but it looks very like love," thought Kitty. It was a different love from any she had known. They turned and walked through the gate down into the shadow of the wooded creeks, the broad strong figure leaning over the weaker one. Kitty fancied the passion in his eyes, the words he would speak. She thought how she had noticed at first sight that there was unusual strength and tenderness in the man's face.

"There will be no talk there of new dresses or reformatory schools, I'm sure of that," she said, preparing to go to bed. She felt somehow wronged and slighted to-night, and wished for old Peter's knee to rest on. She had no friend like old Peter, and never would have.

Rebecca Harding Davis.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]