"Do you remember Dr. Hudson, who attended me at Martigny after our marriage? He has been a true and untiring friend to me. Nobly has he redeemed the unasked pledge of fidelity which he gave me when we parted there. I sought him out when I left you, and he has taken care of me ever since. Part of the time I lived in a convent, and was permitted to work among the poor and the sick; but of late I have been living with Dr. Hudson's mother in Brittany. This is a brief history of a long time. If you can forgive me, and bid me come home, I will tell you all the story of my outwardly quiet life, and you shall; tell me yours. We are husband and wife, Robert; and yet what strangers we are to each other! I wonder if you are as much changed as I am. Since I have known that you have had other heavy griefs besides those which I laid upon you, I dread to think how they may have altered you. Let me help you to bear them now--I, who never before touched your burdens with so much as a finger--let me be to you in adversity what in prosperity I did not care, did not know how to be. Let our dead past bury its dead. Life must always be sad and serious, I think, to those who are neither foolish nor wicked; and it will be always sad and serious to us. There are shadows cast from the time that is gone upon our paths, which no light can wholly dissipate, until we emerge into the perfect day; but the shades of anger and resentment are not among them: they have vanished, and can never come again. I do not know where your home is, Robert, and I must direct this letter to your mother's house; but wherever and whatever it may be, I entreat you let me share it. Let me come to you, late as it is, and keep my vow to you, so long and so wilfully broken, 'until death do us part.' "Katharine Streightley." A quarter-past six. The hour chimed gaily with a treble ring from the little French clock on the mantelpiece. The fire was burning steadily, as fires burn in cheerful frosty weather; the delicate scent of the flowers had come out under the genial influence of the warmth, and dispersed itself through the room. The sharp roll of cab and carriage wheels upon the road came deadened through the closed windows. Robert still knelt beside the bed, and still framed his wife's letter with his outstretched arms. The stir of expectation and preparation was audible downstairs. The dining-room door stood invitingly open, the fights burned brightly, the table was laid for three, and the snowy tablecloth and glittering glass looked not the least attractive among the items of the welcome prepared for the travellers. The little hall was lighted too, and the very porcelain tiles seemed to have been brightened for the occasion. Half-past six. Alice comes upstairs from the kitchen, opens the hall-door, and listens. The keen air comes in, but the old woman is not afraid of the keen air, and there is no wind. Soon she goes to the stair-head and calls,----