"It is thine," whispered the tempter, "the hand that holds so fair a pearl is all unworthy. It chafes and frets within the cruel grasp which an ungleaming pebble might fill as well. It would glow in the sunlight of your fostering care. It would enrich your soul as a priceless gem; as an amaranthine flower it would breathe unto your heart an eternal perfume." Hubert Lisle had made obeisance to feminine beauty in every land; but his heart had remained untouched. Like his father years before, he had arrived at the mature age of twenty-eight, unscathed by the blind god's arrow. Hit at last, and so unwisely pierced! To love the wife of another! Hubert would have scorned such an insinuation but a few days before. But he had not then seen Althea. He loved her, was she not his cousin? He loved her, who could resist, she was so beautiful and good? He loved her, she was so unhappy, _must_ be unhappy as the wife of Thornton Rush. She had been won with false words and deceitful ways and wiles. Thornton deserved to lose what he had dishonestly gained, and what he apparently valued so little. Had not Thornton Rush wronged and, as it were, robbed the dead, and bitterly betrayed himself to gain possession of a jewel which should have been his own, which he would have worn so proudly? Had not this man been his enemy from childhood; with his mother, the curse of his father's house? Ever in his way, a perpetual thorn in the flesh, could he not now dislodge him root and branch, and spit him upon an arrow, that should cease never to quiver? Hubert Lisle experienced qualms of conscience, debated as to right and wrong, gave many thoughts to the censoriousness of the world, but he had not the fear of God before his eyes. "I can win her if I will," was his confident thought at the first. "I will win her at all hazards," was his later iron purpose. And Althea! Oh! is it thus that the child of Ellice doth come to Della's daughter? And what hath this daughter as a shield from the tempter? Came he not unto sinless Eve in Paradise; unto her even who had seen the Eternal Majesty, and listened to His voice? And Althea had not laid up her treasure in Heaven. She had not given her wounded heart to Him who was wounded for our transgressions. She had not poured her sorrows into the ear of the Infinite, nor laid her bleeding hands upon the cross of Christ. So turned Althea from a now unloved, ungracious husband; from a bitter sorrow for her lost child, to human love and human consolation.