'The best has happened,' responded Dr. Bevary. 'Miss Gwinn, you have requested me more than once to bring you here without preparation should the time arrive--for that you could bear certainty, but not suspense. Will you see her?' Her face had grown white and rigid as marble. Unable to speak, she pointed forward with her hand. Dr. Bevary drew it within his own to support her. In a clean, cool chamber, on a pallet bed, lay a dead woman. Dr. Kerr gently drew back the snow-white sheet, with which the face was covered. A pale, placid face, with a little band of light hair folded underneath the cap. She--Miss Gwinn--did not stir: she gave way to neither emotion nor violence; but her bloodless lips were strained back from her teeth, and her face was as white as that of the dead. 'God's ways are not as our ways,' whispered Dr. Bevary. 'You have been acting for revenge: He has sent peace. Whatsoever He does is for the best.' She made no reply: she remained still and rigid. Dr. Bevary stroked the left hand of the dead, lying in its utter stillness--stroked, as if unconsciously, the wedding-ring on the third finger. He had been led to believe that it was placed on that finger, years and years ago, by his brother-in-law, James Lewis Hunter. And had been led to believe a lie! And she who had invented the lie, who had wrought the delusion, who had embittered Mr. Hunter's life with the same dread belief, stood there at the doctor's side, looking at the dead. It is a solemn thing to persist though but tacitly in the acting of a vile falsehood, in the mysterious presence of death. Even Miss Gwinn was not strong-minded enough for that. As Dr. Bevary turned to her with a remark upon the past, she burst forth into a cry, and gave utterance to words that fell upon the physician's ear like a healing balm, soothing and binding up a long-open wound. CHAPTER X. THE YEARS GONE BY. Those readers will be disappointed who look for any very romantic _dénoûment_ of 'A Life's Secret.' The story is a short and sad one. Suggesting the wretchedness and evil that may result when truth is deviated from; the lengths to which a blind, unholy desire for revenge will carry an ill-regulated spirit; and showing how, in the moral government of the world, sin casts its baleful consequences upon the innocent as well as the guilty.