"God bless you for those words, Miss Clendenon! You always come with renewed life and promises of hope. Oh! watch over her well, I entreat you; and, oh! teach her, if you can, to think less harshly of me. May God forgive me for my folly and wickedness to her, and give me a chance to retrieve the past by the future." The two ladies looked at each other, deeply moved. "I am coming back at the very earliest possible day after I recover my child," he went on; "but never till then. I have heard my doom from her own lips." Then he stopped, too deeply pained for words, and with only a heart-wrung "good-by," was gone. "The next time _you will seek me_," she had said, at their last fatal interview. There are many thoughtless words spoken that afterward seem like prophecies. Mrs. Conway and Lulu went back to the room where they were doomed to watch for many long weeks yet to come over the sick-bed where life and death were waging fierce warfare over a life-weary, reckless victim. But the "balance so fearfully and darkly hung" that a touch may turn the scale toward "that bourne whence no traveler returns," wavered, and dropped its pale burden back into the arms of those who loved her; and, shadowy, wasted, and hopeless, Grace Winans took up the cross of her life again, with all the sunshine gone out of it, the only comfort left to her bruised heart that "comfort scorned of devils"--that comfort that is "sorrow's crown"--"remembering happier things." CHAPTER XV. "HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL IN THE HUMAN BREAST." "Ah! one rose, One rose, but one by those fair fingers culled, Were worth a hundred kisses, pressed on lips Less exquisite than thine." --TENNYSON'S "GARDENER'S DAUGHTER." It is the latter part of the month of February, and Norfolk is waking up from its winter torpor. Our friends who wintered in Washington are all at home again. Mrs. Conway and her well-beloved nephew are located once more at Ocean View. Mrs. Winans, only just recovered from her severe and lengthy illness, is once more established in her handsome residence in Cumberland street, and has prevailed on Miss Clendenon to spend the first few weeks after their return with her--Mrs. Clendenon, though lonely without her, willingly giving up those weeks of her daughter's treasured society to the fair woman of whom both son and daughter speak in terms of such unqualified praise. They are very fond of each other--Grace and Lulu--and, indeed, the fair mistress of that grand home feels as if life will be a blank indeed when Lulu, too, leaves her, for her pleasant company helps to dispel the aching sense of waiting and suspense that broods drearily over her own heart. Senator Winans has not returned to the United States--indeed, seems in no haste to return--for he has resigned his seat in Congress, and writes that he will never return until accompanied by the child so strangely lost.