"Unmeaning or not, Aunt Edith, they are sown in your memory, and nothing can root them out. They will bear bitter fruit some day, I promise you. They will yield a rich harvest, when the early growths of ambition and worldliness have died down, and left you only the withered husks and stalks of remorse and regret to satisfy your hunger withal. And now unless you want to publish this, will you go into the parlor and let me follow you?" "I have something more to say to you"---- "There comes Miss Emerson; if it is anything that will bear being said before her, pray continue." "Ah! Is it not delightful!" cried our pretty hostess. "Mr. Rutledge and the other gentlemen have been out, holding a post-mortem examination of the storm, and they have decided that it has left so black a state of heavens and so wet a state of roads that it is impossible to think of your going home to-night, so you will have to stay till to-morrow, _bongré malgré_. And I am so charmed. Ah! _you_ are not, though, I see plainly enough, you want to go back to that tiresome Rutledge. What can it be, Mrs. Churchill? What is the matter with her. Though to be sure, the pale cheeks are gone now; I think I prescribed well. Mr. Rutledge must have said something very exciting all the while he was in here, to have given you such a bright color and such flashing eyes." "A very little excitement brings that result, Miss Emerson. She has not learned much self-possession or self-control yet; we must excuse her." "Oh! by all means. I am only glad she looks brighter than when I left her. But will you come into the parlor? Miss Josephine is going to give us one more song before we go to our rooms." Josephine's song was gay and brilliant, her voice was rich and full, but they failed to drive the dreary echo of Victor's last words out of my mind, that deepened and strengthened as the night advanced: "You shall be freed! Be sure you shall be freed!" The lights shone clear and soft on the gay groups that peopled the rooms around me; but instead of them, I seemed to see, far nearer and more distinct, the deserted chamber at Rutledge, where the guilt of the Past and the crime of the Present, kept awful watch together. CHAPTER XXXVI. "My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it; Stands and lies by me, does what I have done, This too familiar care does make me rue it." QUEEN ELIZABETH. Late breakfast, long lingering at the table, delay in ordering the horses, lengthened adieux, all combined to retard our starting for home on the following morning. I had stood ready on the piazza, waiting for the others to come out, for fifteen minutes; every new delay increased unbearingly my nervousness. "Spare that innocent vine," said Phil, arresting my riding-whip. "You have beaten that cluster of roses to fragments." "Will they never come!" I ejaculated. "It is so tiresome to wait for all those adieux. Can't we start?"