'I am blind! in rough paths groping With outstretched hand! and flightless eyes!'" "Let us hope that the Everlasting arms received him," said Mr. Lacy. "I feared to speak of him to you, Ida; knowing, as I do, that upon a heart like yours, such a blow must have left indelible traces. You have not--you never will forget him, but can you not believe that this, too, was intended for your good?" "I do--although at the time, it seemed very hard that from my meagre list of friends, one so necessary to my happiness, should be stricken. I may never meet another, who will give me affection so fond, yet so disinterested." "Disinterested! that is a term not generally applied to love which leads to betrothal." "Mr. Lacy!" ejaculated Ida, astonished. "But no! you knew us too well? did Lynn never tell you--" she stopped. "No, I first heard of your engagement from a third person; you confirmed it, subsequently." "What _do_ you mean? you are under a strange misapprehension. I never was betrothed to Lynn; he never thought of me but as a friend." "Ida!" his tone was stern. "What are you saying? Have you forgotten the night you left my side for his, upon seeing his dejection--the long promenade, and his reproaches for what he deemed--wrongfully, as I am now assured--was coquetry in you? I was told then, what I had heard, without heeding before, that you were plighted lovers. So confirmed was I in my disbelief that I would have declared it, in defiance of the proofs presented to me, had I not overheard by accident a portion of your conversation. He said--(I remember it well!)--'I have loved you as man never loved woman before--have believed you pure and high-minded. If I thought that the despicable coquetry you hint at, had caused you to insist upon the concealment of our engagement--' I lost the rest. Is not this enough? must I harrow your feelings by recurring to your appeal to me to save him from crime and death for your sake;--or to the awful hour when you were summoned to receive his last sigh? Oh! Ida! Ida! I have trusted in your truth--do not shake my faith now!" There was bewilderment, but not falsehood in the eyes that sustained his rebuking glance. "I have spoken the truth. The sentence which misled you, was the repetition of a remark made to another;--the whisper in his dying hour, a message to the same. To me--I repeat--he was a brother, devoted and true to the last--but nothing more." His lips were ashy white;--his self-command had utterly deserted him.