'How strange to shiver in such heat,' thought Mildred, as she sat down by the open window. She scarcely knew why she sat there--'Only for a few minutes just to think it all out,' she said to herself, as she pressed her aching forehead between her hands; but hours passed and still she did not move. Years afterwards Mildred was once asked which was the bitterest hour of her life, and she had grown suddenly pale and the answer had died away on her lips; the remembrance of this night had power to chill her even then. A singular conflict was raging in Mildred's gentle bosom, passions hitherto unknown stirred and agitated it; the poor soul, dragged before the tribunal of inexorable womanhood, had pleaded guilty to a crime that was yet no crime--the sin of having loved unsought. Unconsciousness could shield her no longer, the beneficent cloak of friendship could not cover her; mutual sympathy, the united strength of goodness and intellect, her own pitying woman's heart, had wrought the mischief under which she was now writhing with an intolerable sense of terror and shame. And how intolerable can only be known by any pure-minded woman under the same circumstances! It would not be too much to say that Mildred absolutely cowered under it; tranquillity was broken up; the brain, calm and reasonable no longer, grew feverish with the effort to piece together tormenting fragments of recollection. Had she betrayed herself? How had she sinned if she had so sinned? What had she done that the agony of this humiliation had come upon her--she who had thought of others, never of herself? Was this the secret of her false peace? was her life indeed robbed of its sweetest illusion--she who had hoped for nothing, expected nothing? would she now go softly all her days as one who had lost her chief good? And yet what had she desired--but to keep him as her friend? was not this the sum and head of her offending? 'Oh, God, Thou knowest my integrity!' she cried from the depths of her suffering soul. Alas! was it her fault that she loved him? was it only her fancy that some sympathy, subtle but profound, united them? was it not he who deceived himself? Ah, there was the stab. She knew now that she was nothing to him and he was everything to her. Her very unconsciousness had prepared this snare for her. She had called him her friend, but it had come to this, that his step was as music in her ear, and the sunshine of his presence had glorified her days. How she had looked for his coming, with what quiet welcoming smiles she had received her friend; his silence had been as sweet to her as his words; the very seat where he sat, the very reels of cotton on her little work-table with which he had played, were as sacred as relics in her eyes.