“Shall you go to the door, aunt, or shall I?” repeated Mae Sweetland, with a stifled heart-pang in her musical voice, the sight of Viola had awakened so bitterly the memory of the night when she had first entered the cottage as Rolfe’s bride, bringing woe and desolation in her train. “Oh, I do not wish to see her! I--I hate the sight of the beautiful face that drove poor Rolfe mad and sent him to his death!” groaned the bereaved mother. “Then I will go and send her away,” Mae cried quickly, rising to her feet and moving unhindered to the door. Another moment and the beautiful rivals stood face to face, but both changed and saddened since that night when they had so balefully crossed each other’s lives. Viola flung back the somber folds of crape, and her face, pale and pure as carved pearl, framed in short curls of the silken hair ruthlessly shorn in the cruel fever, beamed on Mae with a plaintive smile as she asked: “Do you remember me? I have come to see you and Mrs. Maxwell.” “How ill and changed she looks! Did she love Rolfe after all?” thought Mae; but aloud she answered, coldly: “Yes, I remember you, but we--that is, my aunt--begs to be excused.” “Do you mean that she will not see me?” Viola cried, apprehensively, the color flushing through her pale, transparent face like light within a crystal globe. “She will not see you, because you were cruel to our poor Rolfe,” Mae returned, indignantly, her soft blue eyes beginning to flash and glow. Viola recoiled as if the angry girl had struck her a blow, her face paling, great burning tears flashing into her dark, somber eyes, her voice trembling as she faltered: “Oh, she must not refuse me! I must see her, if only once! I promised him, and I must keep my word!” Pushing Mae aside in her pretty, imperious fashion, Viola glided into the hall and into the presence of the sobbing woman drooping so forlornly in her arm-chair. “Mother--mother!” she cried, kneeling down impetuously by her side, winding her arms about the mourner, and laying her weary head on her breast. And Mae, coming in presently in a dazed fashion, found them mingling their tears together. She sat down helplessly a little apart, and began to weep, in a pitiful, noiseless way. She could not help it, her heart was so full with the thought of Rolfe, slain so cruelly in the splendor of his youth. Viola, when she could find her voice, sobbed, plaintively: “Why are you so angry with me still? Have you never forgiven me yet--you and Mae--because Rolfe loved me and made me his bride?” The mother checked her sobs and sighed in answer: “We could have forgiven you anything except that you did not love him in return, and were cruel to my noble boy!” “Cruel--cruel!” cried Viola, in passionate agitation. “Who could be more cruel than Rolfe himself, going away from me--his wife--into exile, peril, and danger--and not even coming to bid me good-bye--never writing me one word while I lay ill on the very borders of death!”