With a faint cry Mabel started from her pillow, and burying her face on Nellie’s neck, wept like a child. “You do not hate me,” she said at last, “or you would not have come so soon.” “Hate you?—no,” answered Nellie. “I have no cause for hating _you_.” “And you will stay with me until I die—until he comes home—and forgive him, too,” Mabel continued. “I can promise the first, but the latter is harder,” said Nellie, her cheeks burning with anger as she gazed on the wreck before her. “But you must, you will,” exclaimed Mabel, rapidly telling all she knew; then falling back upon the pillow, she added, “You’ll forgive him Nellie?” As time passed on, Mabel grew weaker and weaker, clinging closer to Nellie as she felt the dark shadow of death creeping gradually over her. “If he’d only come,” she would say, “and I could place your hand in his before I died.” But it was not to be. Day after day John Jr. lingered, dreading to return, for he knew Nellie was there, and he could not meet her, he thought, at the bedside of Mabel. So he tarried until a letter from ’Lena, which said that Mabel would die, decided him, and rather reluctantly he started homeward. Meantime Mabel, who knew nothing of her loss, conceived the generous idea of willing all her possessions to her recreant husband. “Perhaps he’ll think more kindly of me,” said she to his father, to whom she first communicated her plan, and Mr. Livingstone felt that he could not undeceive her. Accordingly, a lawyer was summoned from Frankfort, and the will duly drawn up, signed, sealed, and delivered into the hands of Mr. Livingstone, whose wife, with a mocking laugh, bade him “guard it carefully, it was so valuable.” “It shows her goodness of heart, at least,” said he, and possibly Mrs. Livingstone thought so, too, for from that time her manner softened greatly toward her daughter-in-law. It was midnight at Maple Grove. On the table, in its accustomed place, the lamp was burning dimly, casting the shadow upon the wall, whilst over the whole room a darker shadow was brooding. The window was open, and the cool night air came softly in, lifting the masses of raven hair from off the pale brow of the dying. Tenderly above her Nellie and ’Lena were bending. They had watched by her many a night, and now she asked them not to leave her, not to disturb a single one—she would rather die alone.