But the days are passing while we travel back into the past; and one, not far distant, brings Regina, the unwelcome. Before she had been in the house many days, she knew from her sister's rambling talk what Paul had said of her coming before she came--knew that he did not believe what the colonel had written about the disastrous effects of the New Mexican climate on his wife's health; but believed, rather, the rumors that had come to him from all sides, each varying a little from the rest in detail, but all agreeing in the main. Regina's marble face, and nervous, transparent fingers, might have confirmed the theory of failing health; but there was something in the momentary flash of her dark eyes, as she listened to her sister's quavering voice, that told of energy or despair, such as woman gains and gathers only from a sudden calling forth of all her passions and powers for the defence of her life, her honor, or position, as the case may be. It may have been only once, in the long past, that this power was called out; but, like the heat-lightning at the close of a hot, murky day, it throws baleful gleams on the cloud-darkened horizon of her life forever after. "My sternly-virtuous moral brother-in-law," Regina said softly to herself, seated on a low stool in the room where her cradle had stood, "would fain drive me from my own father's house, for a fancied injury to the fair name of the Kennerly-Taylor family. Ah, well! the end of all days has not come yet." Her head sank on her bosom, as she sat watching the shadows of the tree-clump by the gate, growing longer and deeper in the fading light of the western sun; and a tear stole into her eye and trickled slowly down her pure white cheek. Her sister, creeping up to her, and looking into her face with what affection she was capable of, shed more of her easy-coming tears. "I told him they were slandering you. Papa always said you were too proud to do a wrong and not acknowledge it. And Paul was always hard on you, I know; and it's all a lie and slander; for even if you were not my sister, I could tell, as any one could, from your face, that you are good and without sin. I know from the stories I have read--they all have just such pale, faultless faces when they're persecuted; and afterwards the misunderstanding is cleared up, and they get married. But then, you _are_ married." She had gotten into deep water now; and thinking, probably, that her younger, cleverer sister would solve this problem as she had so many others, Laura picked up her camphor-bottle and returned to her own room. Regina remained, her "pale, faultless face" turned to the dying light, a pensive, half-pained, half-sad expression on her lips and in her eye, looking almost like a saint striving to forgive and bless her traducers. Yet the woman was not without sin; though how much was to be laid at her door none could tell.