see her,--but only a filmy white curtain moved gently with the first stirrings of the morning air. He stood a moment or two irresolute, recalling the night when he had climbed up by the natural ladder of the old wistaria and had heard her tell the plaintive little story of her "base-born" condition, with tears in her eyes, and the pale moonshine lighting up her face like the face of an angel in a dream. "And she had written her first book already then!" he thought--"She had all that genius in her and I never knew!" A deeper brightness in the sky began to glow, and a light spread itself over the land--the sun was rising. He looked towards the low hills in the east, and saw the golden rim lifting itself like the edge of a cup above the horizon,--and as it ascended higher and higher, some fleecy white clouds rolled softly away from its glittering splendour, showing glimpses of tenderest ethereal blue. A still and solemn beauty invested all the visible scene,--a sacred peace--the peace of an obedient and law-abiding nature wherein man alone creates strange discord. Robin looked long and lovingly at the fair prospect,-the wide meadows, the stately trees warmly tinted with autumnal glory, and thought-- "Could she be happier than here?--safe in the arms of love?--safe and sheltered from all trouble in the home she once idolised?" He would not answer his own inward query--and suddenly the fancy seized him to call her by name, as he had called her on that moonlit night long ago, and persuade her to look out on the familiar fields shining in the sunlight of the morning. "Innocent!" There was no answer. He called a little louder-- "Innocent!" Still silence. A robin hopped out from the cover of wet leaves and peered at him questioningly with its bold bright eye. Acting on an irresistible impulse he set his foot on the gnarled root of the old wistaria and started to climb to the window-sill. Three minutes sufficed him to reach it--he looked into the little room,--the room which had formerly been the study of the "Sieur Amadis de Jocelin"--and there seated at the old oak table with her head bowed down upon her hands and her hair covering her as with a veil, was Innocent. The sunlight flashed brightly in upon her--and immediately above her the golden beams traced out as with a pencil of light the arms of the old French knight with the faded rose and blue of his shield and motto illumining with curiously marked distinctness the words he himself had carved beneath his own heraldic emblems: "Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!" She was very strangely still,--and a cold fear suddenly caught at Robin's heart and half choked his breath. "Innocent!" he cried. Then, leaping into the room like a man in sudden frenzy, he rushed towards that motionless little figure--threw his arms about it--lifted it--caressed it... "Innocent! Look at me! Speak to me!"