"Mr. Whitfield, I can't tell you what I do not know. Mr. Herriott's name is never uttered by her, never mentioned now by me. She is so silent she would certainly forget how to talk if she were not a woman. She intends to go to Europe, and, as you know, keeps some business matters in readiness, but no date has been fixed. You will be advised in time to draw up her will, of which she talked to me about a week ago. The months come and go, and the dear child is always as you see her, calm, uncomplaining, with lips locked as a statue's, but I must say I feel all the time as if I am walking over a grave that may suddenly crumble and cave in under my feet." Returning spring was welcome, and early summer brought once more the solace and diversion of long rides through solemn, lonely pine stretches, where only birds, nature's feathered syrinx, sounded in the silence, happy as human children prattling to their mother. A mute acceptance of the inevitable, as far removed from resignation, as from pleading protest, had sealed Eglah's face in passionless repose, pathetic and inscrutable. Inflexibly she maintained her resolve, "--to fly no signal That the soul founders in a sea of sorrow," and solitude was her refuge. A long delayed monument having been completed at her father's grave, the desire to visit and inspect it dominated her, and one hot day the two women went North. To the devoted child bowed at the feet of a marble angel, the carved lips seemed to whisper her father's farewell words of commendation and tender gratitude for her self-sacrifice in his behalf. Did he know now all it had cost--the branding humiliation, the fierce heart hunger she had found only when she offered herself on an altar that crumbled beneath her? When the slab was covered with white violets, and she had pressed her lips to the name chiselled on the scroll, she put one hand on Mrs. Mitchell's shoulder and pointed to a grassy plot at her feet. "Little mother, I hope it will not be long before I can shut my tired eyes forever, and when that happy day comes I want you to bring me here and lay me close to father, at his left side. One other thing you must not fail to do; after I am in my coffin be sure you take off my ring--my wedding ring--and if Mr. Herriott be living give it into his hand. He has wanted it back since the day he placed it on my finger, and only God knows how glad I shall be to surrender it. 'So long as ye both shall live' it is mine, but in the grave God gives us back our vows and sets us free." The cold, hopeless renunciation in face and voice was more than the loving little woman could endure, and with a burst of tears she threw her arm about the girl, pressing her to her heart.