until he stood opposite to Rose, and looked down upon her fair face, which in the red light had borrowed some of the bloom of her girlhood. Her blue eyes, glistening with unshed tears, were raised to him in speechless entreaty; and he met their gaze with an unspeakable pity in his own.

Child," he said, in a voice of trouble, mingled with compassion, "I have just seen you pass through a woman's keenest sorrow."

No, no," sobbed Rose, "no, no! That was not my keenest sorrow. I shall soon go to her.

I am going to die."

Yes," he said, still looking down upon her with a strange tenderness.

"Oh!" she cried, with a pitiful wail in her feeble voice; "if I could only do something to atone for it, to make you believe that I love you! I was such a silly weak creature; I did not know then how much better your love was than his. You did love me before I was so wicked, didn't ?" you

"Love you!" he echoed.

"Yes, I know it," she continued, wringing her hands.

saken you.

"I knew it as soon as I had for

Don't think I was ever happy.

He was kind, but every word he spoke was a reproach to me. I had a little child, but she scarcely belonged to me; I could not let her live with me; I never nursed her; we never played together, like little Hetty and I used to play together, just after you married me. Do you remember? Oh, that was so happy! I feel as if I had been in heaven once, and fallen down, down, down into a pit of darkness. Shall we know each other in heaven do you think?"

"I think we shall," he answered.

"Is it better for me to die than to live?" she asked imploringly.

"God thinks it best," he said.

"If I had lived," she went on,

"could you

so have forgiven me that you could take me back again, quite back again to you, as your wife, whom you loved and trusted, as in the time before I deceived you. I don't think anybody could love you as I would. Oh, how I would wait and watch to please you! Could you have forgiven me so ?"

"No," said John Morley, his whole heart yearning towards her, yet knowing that it was her doom so plainly read upon her face, which

made it possible for him to keep her under his roof during the short span still remaining to her of life. The complication which he had dreaded when he heard that Rose was living was already disentangled. He would not be compelled to put her from him, against the softening of his own love and the urgent pleas of her penitence. He could see that a few weeks, or months it might be, remained, during which she could still be with him, and he could look upon her and listen to her beloved voice, without any wrong done to his own conscience and his sense of righteousness. It was a great boon from the God he had distrusted.

Child," he said-and from that time he called her by no other name " I love you wondrously, and therefore I thank God that He is going to call you home to Himself. I could not have taken you back living to my inmost heart, and to the wifehood which was your right

once.

But, dying, I can shelter you here, within my own house, upon my own hearth, where Hester's mother died many years ago. And in my very heart of hearts I can cherish the memory of you, coming home at last, weary of your long exile and sin, comforted by my

tenderness, and passing away under my protection. Give thanks, my poor child, that your probation upon earth is nearly ended."

Rose had lifted herself painfully and feebly from her chair, and stood opposite to him, listening with parted lips and beseeching eyes to his words, uttered in a voice of passionate affection. She could not altogether understand him yet, any more than she had done in those far-off times when he had seemed very high above her girlish comprehension. But she knew that he loved her and had forgiven her he would not banish her again from the home from which she had fled, being easily tempted. As a child whose intelligence cannot grasp all the meaning of its own fault and the pardon given to it hides its childish tears in the bosom of its mother, Rose stretched out her arms to her husband. He hesitated for a moment, a hesitation which she did not see, and then drew her towards him, and laid her head upon his breast..

CHAPTER XXI.`

CARL'S HOUR.

CARL was exactly twenty-four hours behind John Morley and Hester, on their rapid journey homewards. At Paris he learned, through an interpreter, that two such travellers had passed through the day before, and had gone on direct for England. The station-master at Little Aston informed him mysteriously that there was a rumour in the town of Mr. Morley and his daughter having taken possession of their house again, and that there was certainly a lady with them, whom people believed to be no other than Mrs. Morley herself. Carl's anxiety fell from him in a moment. Hester was safe and at home again! He could not give a thought either to Rose or her husband. Leaving his portmanteau upon the platform as a thing unworthy of his recollection, he rushed with precipitate headlong haste to John Morley's house, haggard, dusty, and travel-stained, with eyes dull for want of sleep, and tangled hair falling in disorder about his careworn face. There