"My darling, the events of to-day have thrown down the last barriers of restraint between us, and we are back again where we left off that bitter day when you cast me off for the sake of the woman who declared she had a better claim to me. Cannot we go back to that past?" Her face was downcast, her eyes drooped from his, she trembled, and did not speak. But he was not repulsed, for she let him keep the little trembling hands in his, and he was thus encouraged to go on in a low voice, hoarse from passionate love: "Cissy, I love you more devotedly than ever, and I should have sought you long ago but that I feared a repulse. I knew so well your willful pride, you see. But now fate has thrown us together again, and it will break my heart to lose this new sweet hope. Darling, will you forgive the past, and let the future make amends?" Cissy had not thought last night that she would be won so quickly as this. She had resolved in her heart to be quite cold at first, and make her lover's second wooing very difficult. But as Cameron said, the events of the day had made reserve impossible. They had come face to face with the past in all its love and pain. So she could not steel her responsive heart to her lover's impetuous wooing. With a great burst of tears that revealed all her heart, she threw herself into his eager arms that clasped and held her with boundless delight. And the woman whom Cissy had saved from exposure by her generous prayer for mercy, crept away to her room, muttering, in a fearful way: "How strangely fate pursues me in this house! I thought I was done with my bitter past, but three of its ghosts have risen here to confront me with my sins! What a terrible blunder I made going into that room! But I did not dream of meeting my divorced husband there! Still, I might have guessed he would follow that girl, the one love of his life. She is indeed an angel, but alas! she would not intercede for me if she knew the thing I had done last night!" CHAPTER LIII. "I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER!" "Oh, loved one! where art thou? * * * * * Doubt whispers in my ear Many and many a fear, And tells me thou art gay while I despair, Yet be the bright hours thine, If only thou art mine, I all the dark ones am content to bear." The strange disappearance of her daughter had come to Mrs. Fitzgerald with the suddenness of a thunderbolt. To lose her like this--the child she had loved so dearly and mourned so unceasingly--over whom she had rejoiced with such yearning love when found; oh! it was inexpressibly bitter!