In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: "There is a way out." Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her room. "A passage to my darling beyond!" She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was set upon the swift accomplishment of an object. Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice softened into tenderness--softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul's anguish: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me!" She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death. Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the "Star Spangled Banner" softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling glory. At that moment Dorothy's pet canary began to sing. The delicate little feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing forth from the music room, broke into song. Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant melody. Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song! Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand. The little silken feathered throat of her darling's pet had turned aside the "Grim Sickle." She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered--wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun's radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered--bowed down--lower, lower. In tones of resignation--tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: "Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!" And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: "Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!" After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.