"Well," she answers, half-reluctantly, "once to-day in the gallery, there was a look on your face--flitting and momentary, though--that reminded me of this line which I have somewhere read: "'Despair that spurns atonement's power.'" "Was I right?" looking away from him half-sorry that she had said it, and fearful of wounding him. And "silence gave consent." CHAPTER XI. "IT MAY BE FOR YEARS, AND IT MAY BE FOREVER." "Enough that we are parted--that there rolls A flood of headlong fate between our souls." --BYRON. Between eight and nine o'clock Grace had specified as the hour when her husband might call--and the French clock on the mantel of her private parlor at Willard's hotel chimed the half-hour sharply as he was ushered in by an obsequious waiter. The room was entirely deserted--no, a child was toddling uncertainly across the floor, jingling in its baby hand that infantile source of delight an ivory rattler, with multitudinous silver bells attached thereto. What discordance will not a mother endure and call it music for the baby's sake? One searching glance, and Paul Winans had his child in his arms, clasped close to his hungry, aching heart. His boy! _his!_ Long months had flown away since he had looked on the face of his child, and now he held him close, his proud, bearded lip pressed to the fragrant lips of the babe, his breath coming thick and fast, his jealous, passionate heart heaving with deep emotion. But the child started back, frightened at the bearded face of the stranger, and his low cry of fear struck reproachfully to his father's soul. "A stranger to my own child," he muttered, bitterly. "Why, my baby, my baby, do you not know your own papa?" "Mamma! papa!" repeated the child, and with a sunny, fearless smile, he stroked the noble brow that bent over him. Grace had taught his baby lips to love the name of "papa," and now at the very sound his terror was removed, and he nestled closer in the arms that held him as though the very name were a synonym for everything that was sweet and gentle. The unhappy mother entering at that moment with pride and reserve sitting regnant on her brow, reeled backward at that sight, with a quivering lip, and pale hands clasped above her wildly throbbing heart. It was but for a moment. As he turned to the rustle of her silken robe, with their child clasped in one strong arm, she came forward slowly, very slowly, but standing before him at last with bowed head and hands clasped loosely together. Captain Clendenon had said of her long before, that as much of an angel as was possible for mortal to possess was about her. I don't know about its being so much angel--I, who know women better than the captain did, think that the best of them have quite sufficient of the opposite attribute about them; but, at this moment, all of the angel within her was roused by the sight of her husband with their child in his arms.