“This is weakness! This is miserable driveling!” exclaimed Miss Seabright, starting from her resting-place upon his bosom, and dashing the tears from her flashing eyes. “I am no mendicant for your love, sir! No! nor will I purchase it at too high a price, either!” she added bitterly, throwing off his deprecating hand, and hurrying from him into the house. Hugh looked after her in deep thought; then said to himself: “The flow and ebb of ocean’s tide is nothing to the waving forth and back of her mind in its present phase. How strong—how terrible is the death-agony of her ambition! If the contest were simply between ambition and love, ambition would triumph in a high, proud nature like hers; but justice sides with love, and together they are invincible. I would the battle were over, though.” He did not see her again during the day. She did not appear even at the supper-table. I have no time to tell you how Garnet Seabright spent that night, how the battle in her soul was fought and won. I have only time left for results. In the gray of the morning Hugh Hutton came downstairs, booted, great-coated, and laden with his saddle-bags, preparatory to mounting his horse to set forth on his journey. He found Garnet Seabright in the great hall, apparently waiting for him. She stood at the foot of the stairs and leaned for support against the balustrades. She was looking very haggard, as from loss of rest and anxiety; yet, through all the physical weariness there radiated the light of a calm joy. He lifted his hat and bowed, intending to pass her, when she raised her hand, and by an adjuring gesture, stayed him, murmuring very low: “Dr. Hutton, was it really your intention to leave me this morning?” “It was, Miss Seabright,” he replied, in a deep, constrained voice. “‘It was,’ and is it?” she added, in a low tone, gently moving from her position. “It was, and is, Miss Seabright, unless you give me the only good reason for staying.” She advanced toward him, slowly, slowly, with averted face and deeply blushing cheek, laid both her hands in both of his, and murmured almost timidly: “Stay, then, Dr. Hutton; I give up the estate.” Hugh Hutton dropped his saddle-bags, drew her to his bosom and pressed her there, but spoke no word as yet. “Yes, take me, Dr. Hutton! I am not worth much, bereft of all my glory, shorn,” she smiled faintly; “quite shorn of all my beams; but such as I am, you may have me, Dr. Hutton,” she murmured, dropping her head on his shoulder. Then, as he strained her to his bosom, the passion-fraught heart of the man found expression for its fullness of emotion in one “great heart-word”: “My wife!” “Yes, your wife,” she whispered, very softly, hiding her glowing face on his bosom. “Your wife! no more nor less than simply that cheerful toiler by your side. I thought to have conferred wealth on you! It was a proud, presuming thought—it is past now.”