He knew that she thought him cruelly hard and cold: he heard her give a little sigh as she moved away a step or two, but it was with almost a feeling of relief, anything being better than that she should know the real feelings of the moment. Winifred was not thinking of him as he imagined, but something in his manner brought to her a keen impression of the breach between the dead and the living, which she had been trying to make him forget. She stood for a moment with her hand on the door, and her head bent,--thinking. She said at last, softly and pleadingly,-- "If it has not been between you and him of late quite as it was in the old days, you will not remember that any more, will you, Anthony? If he ever did you an injustice in his thoughts, it was not willingly, only-- only one of those misunderstandings which the best, the noblest, sometimes fall into. If he had lived he would have told you this himself one day, and therefore I say it to you from him," she added, lifting her eyes, and speaking with grave steadfastness, as if she were indeed delivering a message from the dead, "and I know that you will be glad to think that it is so, and to help us for his sake." The moment she had said this she went away so quickly that Anthony's call did not even reach her ears. It was only one word, "Winifred!" but it was as well she did not hear, since one word is sometimes strong enough to carry a whole load of anguish and of yearning love. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. "In my own heart love had not been made wise To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, To know even hate is but a mask of love's, To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success." _Paracelsus_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------