To-night she stood with head thrown back and chest expanded, as though she were physically breathing in the beauty around her. The rose-purple of a moment since had narrowed to a single crimson bar, stretched above the opal barrier of the hills, athwart the deep yellow of the sky. "The walls were of jasper, and the city was of pure gold like unto clear glass!" "Supper, Couthin Marget! and wheaten porridge. Come in with speed!" "Peace, poppet! Who talks of porridge in the New Jerusalem!" "But this is not the New Jerusalem, only the ragged little village of St. Mary's." It was Elinor's voice that answered, and Margaret rejoiced to catch a strain of oldtime lightness in it. Moreover, the promise of the voice was fulfilled as they sat at the supper-table, for Elinor was as one who has shaken off a burden. Her gown was of a rich red that might have been stolen from the sunset, and in her hair she had set a wing of the cardinal tanager. Around her neck hung a single ruby. "Truth, Elinor, thou art like a flame to-night," exclaimed Margaret as Cecil drew out a stool for her at the table. "'Tis time, Cousin. Poor Cecil hath had too much of shadow in his little life. Now, I am fain to throw some brightness into it, if 'tis but a red gown and a tanager's wing." "Hurrah! Now art thou thine old self once more, as I saw thee on the morning when I was Lord of--" Margaret saw the gayety fade out of Elinor's face as swiftly as a sunlighted sail is swallowed up by the gray mist. "Dost thou mind, Elinor," she said, quickly, "how we were wont to make merry on Candlemas Eve at home in England?" "Ay, right well I remember how once, when I was a girl, I went through the woods gathering wax berries for the candles." Here she paused, and added softly, with a mounting flush and a tender smile, "'Twas with Christopher Neville." Margaret Brent looked up astonished. "Yes, Cousin, I can speak his name, and mean to talk often of him with Cecil, to make the boy, so far as I can, in his image, so tender and true, so steadfast and faithful to death." "Thou art a brave woman." "Nay, I have been till now a very foolish one. Even now, as thou didst see, Cecil's words and all they called up cut to the quick like a two-edged knife; but this is wrong, and I know it. Sure, God did not give us memory to be a curse, but a joy. So far as I sinned toward Christopher I must bear the burden of sorrow; but I mean not that it shall blight all the past. We were happy together once--then sorrow swept between; but now that too has passed, and I am fain to live once again, though alone, the happiness we shared." "Art sure it will not try thine endurance too far to dwell so on the past?"