There is One who hath said that to Him belongeth vengeance. When His creatures take into their incapable grasp the javelins of His wrath it is generally with as impotent and baleful a result as when young Phaëton, seeking to guide the chariot of the sun, brought to himself despair, and scorched to cinders the unoffending earth. Thus was it with Virginia. With the nearness of her unbridled love and anger she had forever seamed as if with fire the fair world of her content. It seemed to her that space itself would be too narrow to hold her apart from such women as were good and true. Just God! could it be that her sin was to be visited upon the being whom of all the world she loved best, because of whom that sin had been committed? Was Roden going to suffer, perhaps to die, in the stead of the woman she had sought to slay? He was not often at Caryston now; most of his days were spent with his betrothed. He did not notice the change which was stealing over Herrick’s daughter. He had no time to wonder that she did not sing now at her spinning as once she had sung. He would not have paused to listen to her had she done so. He was called away again to the North on the last of May, and on the day after his departure Aunt Tishy burst into Virginia’s room with flour-covered hands. “Gord! Gord! honey,” she said, tossing her blue-checked apron up and down with wild, savage gestures of dismay and grief, “what yuh think?--Marse Jack’s sweetheart’s dun got de rade fever, an’ dey don’ think as how she’ll live.” Virginia stood and stared at her with eyes which saw nothing. Her face took on a ghastly greenish pallor. About her brow and mouth there stole a cold moisture. She opened her lips, and seemed to speak. Her lips framed the same words stupidly over and over again. “Gord! honey,” cried the old negress, seizing her, as she swayed backward as if about to fall, “is yuh gwine be sick yuhsef?” Virginia pushed her away, walked steadily over to an old oak cupboard, took out a jug of whiskey, and drank from its green glass throat as she had seen men do. The stinging liquid filled her veins with a hot, false strength. She spoke quickly now, in a harsh tone, seizing the old nurse by the shoulders, and thrusting her white face, with its lambent, distended eyes, close to that of the terrified Aunt Tishy.