She was quite a different girl at dawn from the one on whom yesterday’s sun had set. Then her life lay before her, all bright and fair, like a landscape in the morning sun. Now it was like the same scene at twilight, with the sad rain falling and dimming all in its somber veil. “I am done with my life, if all is like they tell me,” she said, soberly, to herself. “What shall I do with all the years that lie before me yet till I die?” Like a flash, her thoughts went back to Delaney House and the beautiful blue room that had held her a captive those three months. Before her mind’s eye came a dark, grave, handsome face; in her ears rang a deep and musical voice, with a tone of subtle melancholy. He was reading the poem she had not cared to hear, but which seemed at this moment to have burned itself in on her memory: “How many years will it be, I wonder And how will their slow length pass, Till I shall find rest in silence under The trees and the waving grass?” “Perhaps you may even subscribe to its sad sentiments some day,” Oran Delaney had said to her, and how scornfully she had derided the idea. Was she the same girl? Scarcely. She had a vague fancy that she would wake up presently and find that she had been sleeping and dreaming some horrid dream. She furtively pinched herself, and found that she was not dreaming at all. She was broad awake, and the new day was shining in at her windows, chill and murky and sunless, like the life that lay before her. “And all for such a little, little act of folly,” she said to herself, with a terrible sinking at the heart. Mr. Rodney suddenly came over to her. He took Aline’s cold white hands and smoothed them gently between his strong warm ones. “Aline,” he said, “do you think it quite right to hold yourself bound by the oath you spoke of? Do not the dreadful consequences it entails on you justify you in breaking it?” She shook her head slowly. “I do not care,” she replied. “It must be a very solemn oath that can bind you under such circumstances,” he said, slowly. “Is your decision quite unalterable, my dear?” “Yes, papa,” she replied, with a deep sigh. He was silent for a moment, and an echo of her own sad sigh drifted over his lips. When he looked back at her again there was a new light in his eyes. “Aline, I have been thinking of a new plan,” he said. “A new plan?” she echoed. “Yes; I cannot bear to see your life blighted, all your chances of happiness destroyed. We will go away from here and make our home in some distant spot, where this strange story can never follow you. You may yet be happy.” Her young heart thrilled with sudden joy. She looked at him with grateful affection. “Papa, would you, indeed, do so much for me?” she inquired. He bowed silently, and gently pressed her hand. Aline forgot his harshness and anger of a little while ago, and remembered only the patient, unalterable love that was ready to make such a sacrifice for her sake.