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seemed to her as if it could only have been yesterday, last night, when she locked it up; and she had been passing through some horrible dream. This sharp martyrdom of repentance was no more than a trick of her forewarning conscience. The utter stillness and solitariness of the house was but an accident of the passing hour. Hester must be asleep in her little bed; and her husband would come in soon from chapel. When she saw Robert again she would bid him come near her no more.

Rose stood in the middle of the room gazing vacantly about her. It seemed as if after a mighty tempest, after a strong flood of great troubles and sins which had tossed her feeble soul from billow to billow, she had been brought suddenly home again to the haven where she could cast anchor in still smooth water. She had been very happy to-day. She felt like a child whose face is hidden in the close embrace of its mother, and who sees no longer the terrors which have driven it to that refuge. She was vaguely, childishly happy again for a moment. Everything evil was drawing near to an end. The night was almost past, and the day was at hand. Even here, in the

place which should have upbraided her most loudly, she saw sadness indeed, but not hopelessness. Her sins, which were many, had been pardoned.

She crossed the room slowly to the piano, and stooped down to look at the music-sheet on it. It was no song, but a chant," I will arise and go to my Father." She remembered now that it was to her husband, not to Robert Waldron, she had sung it; and he had stood beside her, his hand resting upon her shoulder, and his voice, a low, weak, yet sweet voice, joining with hers. Was it not a token for good, finding this sacred chant still open? Then she had known nothing about going to the Father. Now she had arisen, with all her sins and unfaithfulness, and gone to Him, and He had seen her afar off, and had received her gladly. Would it not be the same with her husband? She sat down and ran her fingers absently along the discoloured keys. The jarring, jingling tones, which had lost all harmony, brought her back sharply to the full reality of her position. She could dream no more. The small mirror, which she had had set over the

piano, reflected from its dulled surface a faded,

stricken, withered face, instead of the bright, laughing features of the young proud mistress of a new home. She was Rose Morley, the guilty wife of a dishonoured husband.

CHAPTER VI.

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

JOHN MORLEY went up to the chapel, and after waiting there some time, and finding no other member of the small church was coming, he went back directly to his house. All day he had been the prey of vehement agitation, and the approaching return of night did not tend to allay it. He let himself into his lonely dwelling, and stood upon the threshold for a minute, with the door half open in his hand, listening for some sound to break the stillness of his home. A craven fear of being quite alone was at work within him for the first time in his life; his flesh crept and his nerves tingled. But he had no resource, there was no means of escaping from this new and panic dread. He closed the door and went on, stopping to change his boots for the slippers he found put ready for him. He entered his own parlour and lit his lamp; but this attack upon his nervous system continued to gather strength. His hands trembled until he could not turn

over the leaves of his book. A vague, indescribable impression was produced upon his mind by something in the aspect of his room, that his lost wife had been there a few minutes ago,--had but just quitted it. He fancied more keenly than ever that he could almost see her and hear her. An agony of mingled despair and tenderness shook his soul to the centre. It might have been but a day or two since Rose had forsaken him; it might have been the very night when he had aroused his little girl from her sleep, telling her it was better to die than to live. There was something unutterably mournful in this strong, unwitnessed, insupportable anguish, which mastered John Morley, and brought the past before him a hundred-fold more vivid than the present.

Upon this paroxysm of his soul, which just now was bearing him rapidly to the verge of insanity, there fell suddenly the shrill, false jangle of the piano in the room overhead. He lifted himself up, and hearkened with a ghastly face. The discord ran through his fevered brain once, and then ceased; the house was plunged again into the dreariness of an unbroken silence.

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