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SHE had one years before, but since the summer
day when she sent from her the white-faced
man, whose heart she knew she had broken, it
had been hardening,—searing over with a stiff crust which
nothing, it seemed, could penetrate. And yet there were
times when she was softened and wished that much which
she had done might be blotted out from the great book
in which even she believed. There was many a misdeed
recorded there against her, she knew, and occasionally
there stole over her a strange disquietude as to how she
should confront them when they all came up before her.
Usually she could cast such thoughts aside by a drive
down gay Broadway, or at most by a call at Stewart's,
but the sight of Anna's white face and the knowing
what made it so white were a constant reproach, and conscience
gradually wakened from its torpor, enough to
whisper of the only restitution in her power, that of confession
to Arthur. But from this she shrank nervously.
She could not humble herself thus to any one, and she
would not either, she said. Then came the fear lest by

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another than herself her guilt should come to light. What
if Thornton Hastings should find her out? She was half
afraid he suspected her now, and that gave her the heaviest
pang of all, for she respected Thornton highly, and it
would cost her much to lose his good opinion. She had
lost him for her niece, but she could not spare him from
herself, and so in sad perplexity, which wore upon her
visibly, the autumn days went on until at last she sat
one morning in her dressing-room and read in a foreign
paper:

“Died at Strasburg, Aug. 31st, Edward Coleman, Esq.
aged 46.”

That was all, but the paper dropped from the trembling
hands, and the proud woman of the world bowed
her head upon the cold marble of the table and wept
aloud. She was not Mrs. Meredith now, she was Julia
Ruthven again, and she stood with Edward Coleman out
in the grassy orchard where the apple-blossoms were
dropping from the trees, and the air was full of the insects'
hum and the song of mating birds. Many years
had passed since then. She was the wealthy Mrs. Meredith
now, and he was dead in Strasburg. He had been
true to her to the last, for he had never married, and
those who had met him abroad had brought back the
same report of a “white-haired man, old before his time,
and with a tired, sad look on his face.” That look she
had written there, and she wept on as she recalled the

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past and murmured softly: “Poor Edward, I loved you
all the while, but I sold myself for gold, and it turned
your brown locks snowy white,—poor darling,—” and
her hands moved up and down the folds of her cashmere
robe as if it were the brown locks they were smoothing
just as they used to do. Then came a thought of Anna,
whose face wore much the look which Edward's did
when he went slowly from the orchard and left her there
alone with the apple-blossoms dropping on her head, and
the hum of the bees in her ear.

“I can at least do right in that respect,” she said.
“I can undo the past to some extent and lessen the load
of sin upon my shoulders. I will write to Arthur
Leighton; I surely need tell no one else,—not yet, at
least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can
trust to his discretion and to his honor too; he will not
betray me, unless it is necessary, and then only to Anna.
Edward would bid me do it if he could speak; he was
some like Arthur Leighton.”

And so with the dead man in Strasburg before her
eyes, Mrs. Meredith nerved herself to write to Arthur
Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed upon him, imploring
his forgiveness, and begging him to spare her as
much as possible.

“I know from Anna's own lips how much she has
always loved you,” she wrote in conclusion, “but she
does not know of the stolen letter, and I leave you to

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make such use of the knowledge as you shall think
proper.”

She did not put in a single plea for poor little Lucy
dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode.
She was purely selfish still with all her qualms of conscience,
and only thought of Anna, whom she would
make happy at another's sacrifice. So she never hinted
that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged
to Lucy Harcourt, and as she finished her own letter and
placed it in an envelope with the one which Arthur had
sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the wedding
she would give her niece,—a wedding not quite like
that she had designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but
a quiet, elegant affair, just suited to a clergyman who
was marrying a Ruthven.

p605-388

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