Let us not attempt the picture of Isabel keeping the happy guise of a wedding guest among her kindred and childhood playmates while her heart burned with perpetual misery, yearning, and alarm. "My baby, my baby!" cried her breast, while the babe slept sweetly under faultless care. Nor need we draw a close portrait of her husband's mind, if mind it could longer be called. A horror of sleep, a horror of being awake and aware, remorse, phantoms, voices, sudden blazings of wrath as suddenly gone, sweating panics, that craven care of life which springs so rank as the soul decays, and a steady, cunning determination to keep whole the emptied shell of reputation and rank,--these were the things that filled his hours by day, by night; these, and a frightful expectance of one accusing, child-claiming ghost that never came. The air softened to Indian summer; the ice faded off the pool; a million leaves, crimson and bronze, scarlet and gold, dropped tenderly upon its silvering breadth and lay still; and both the joyless master of the larger house and the merry maid of the cottage asked Heaven impatiently if the pond would never freeze over again. It was Saturday afternoon when Giles, asked by Sarah Stebbens where Mr. Arthur was, told her he was again, as he had been so many times the last three days, down by the water, sitting at the edge of the overhanging bank; or, as the Englishman expressed it, "'dreamink the 'appy hours aw'y.'" So the week passed out; a second came in, and the rector of All Angels went to his sacred office. He knew, before he appeared in the chancel, that Mrs. Morris was in her accustomed place, and Ruth and her father in theirs, and that Leonard was not yet reported back nor looked for; but exactly as he began to read, "'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father'"--a sickness filled Mrs. Morris's frame, a deathly hue overspread the minister's face, and Leonard came in and sat beside his father and sister. Yet the service went on. The people knelt. "'Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts'"-- Thus far the rector's voice had led, but here it sank, and the old General's, in a measure, took its place. Then it rose again, in the confession, "There is no health in us," and in the supplication, "Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders." There once more it failed, while the people, faltering with distress, repeated, "That we may hereafter lead a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen."