Rose's husband, now he was Hester's father. The news of his illness affected him chiefly as it touched his own purposes. He was soon considering Hester's position should her father die, and how it would affect him. He flattered himself that Hester's reluctance to receive his suit arose partly from regard to her father; but his death would remove this stumbling-block; nay, might become a stepping-stone to the attainment of his end. She would be left homeless, penniless, and friendless; and it was incredible to suppose that she would again refuse the lot he would offer her. In his idle and luxurious worldliness, he could not comprehend the possibility of Hester choosing rather a life of difficulty and trial than his own lot of untroubled abundance of all things.

.

He had strolled on unthinkingly until he reached the entrance of the town, just as the clock of the old church struck ten. The streets lay before him, with lights twinkling fitfully in many of the windows. There would be no danger now in walking once again under the walls of Hester's home. He passed on to it, with the impatient swiftness of one who has been long denied a pleasure. The gloom of

the evening was deeper there, for the street was narrow and the houses high on each side. He crossed over to the opposite causeway, and looked up to the second storey. He had done so often in the old times to see if any light shone in Rose's pleasant sitting-room; but the shutters of that window were closed. In the next casement, however, glimmered a wan and sickly gleam, the beacon of illness, the pale watch-fire, where Hester, solitary and uncomforted, kept watch over the inroads of death. Why did his treacherous fancy mingle the images of Hester and Rose? He had diligently rooted from his memory all unpleasant and disquieting reminiscences. Yet now, standing in the dark, opposite the house, and looking up to the windows, he felt himself the boy he had been eleven years ago. A boy only. He caught again the oft repeated apology for the past. It was as a boy he had loved and tempted Rose; it was as a man he loved and honoured Hester.

He stood in the quiet street some minutes, no passer-by coming to disturb him. At length he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and felt that it was time to move on.

He

traversed the whole length of the street, and then retraced his steps past John Morley's door. Was he in a dream to-night? Was he the boy of three-and-twenty; or the man thirtyfour years of age, weary, disenchanted, with a pricking goad in his conscience which he could not altogether pluck out? To see Hester, only for a moment, would allay this fever of his spirit; and what would be more natural than for him to testify his concern for her, and her father? There could be neither harm nor danger in simply knocking at the door, and asking the servant how John Morley was. Perhaps Hester herself might answer his knock; as he could remember her doing once many years before. He called back her image to his mind; a grave, sweet, simple child, who hailed his coming with a demure rapture of delight. If he had only foreseen into what a womanhood this childhood was about to expand! With a profound sigh, Robert Waldron set his foot upon John Morley's threshold, and knocked a low uncertain knock at his door.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE OTHER SIDE.

WHEN Rose Morley heard of her husband's dangerous illness, she implored Hester suffer her to see him at once, lest he should die without forgiving her. But his malady was more of the mind than the body, and Grant forbade any kind of agitation for him. John Morley's brain was at work with too busy and too perilous an activity. He was neither insensible nor delirious; but from hour to hour his thoughts were flashing, with lightning speed, over all the events of his past life; and his tongue, so long reticent, read aloud the secret records. It was a fever, but not a fever of the blood. The spirit, long kept in check, was at last avenging itself upon its tyrant. John Morley, lying almost motionless upon his bed, with his meagre face and burning eyes turned towards the listener at his side, poured out restlessly the pent-up emotions of his years of silence.

To speak to him of Rose, in this strange

fire and fever of his memory, would have been madness. The only persons he admitted near to him were Hester and Lawson; and to them his tongue ran on fast of all his love to her, and of all the torture of despair and shame he had suffered for her. Her name was always

upon his lips. There was something of a solemn humiliation in this spectacle of a soul, forced at last to make itself known to some other human soul. Neither Hester nor Lawson answered him, and he did not need an answer. The fire within him was consuming him until he spoke with his lips; that was all. They had only to stand by and listen.

It was difficult to Hester to turn from her father to Rose with gentleness. She began to question whether the sin she had committed did not shut her out from all claim to her husband's pardon. When Rose demanded an entrance to his room, with an importunity almost angry, she replied by telling her all that her father had said. Until that moment Rose had not felt the fulness of the wrong she had inflicted upon a nature like John Morley's. She could scarcely hope any more; but she would minister to him afar off, and Hester,