of this one feeling—Max loved me.

At dusk, after staying in all day, I went out, partly because Penelope wished it, and partly for health's sake. I never lost a chance of getting strong now. My sister and I walked along silently, each thinking of her own affairs, when, at a turn in the road which led, not from the camp, but from the moorlands, she cried out, "I do believe there is Doctor Urquhart."

If he had not heard his name, I think he would have passed us without knowing us. And the face that met mine, when he looked up—I never shall forget it to my dying day.

It made me shrink back for a minute, and then I said:—

"Oh! Max, have you been ill?"

"I do not know. Yes—possibly."

"When did you come back?"

"I forget—oh! four days ago."

"Were you coming to Rockmount?"

"Rockmount?—oh! no." He shuddered, and dropped my hand.

"Doctor Urquhart seems in a very uncertain frame of mind," said Penelope, severely, from the other side the road. "We had better leave him. Come, Dora."

She carried me off, almost forcibly. She was exceedingly displeased. Four days, and never to have come or written! She said it was slighting me and insulting the family.

"A man, too, of whose antecedents and connections we knew nothing. He may be a mere adventurer—a penniless Scotch adventurer; Francis always said he was."

"Francis is—" But I could not stay to speak of him, or to reply to Penelope's bitter words. All I thought was how to get back to Max, and entreat him to tell me what had happened. He would tell me. He loved me. So, without any feeling of "proper pride," as Penelope called it, I writhed myself out of her grasp, ran hack to Doctor Urquhart, and took possession of his arm, my arm, which I had a right to.

"Is that you, Theodora?"

"Yes, it is I." And then I said, I wanted him to go home with me, and tell me what had happened.

"Better not; better go home with your sister."

"I had rather stay here. I mean to stay here."

He stopped, took both my hands, and forced a smile:—"You are the determined little lady you always were; but you do not know what you are saying. You had better go and leave me."

I was sure then some great misery was approaching us. I tried to read it in his face. "Do you—" did he still love me; I was about to ask, but there was no need. So my answer, too, was brief and plain.

"I never will leave you as long as I live."

Then I ran back to Penelope, and told her I should walk home with Doctor Urquhart; he had something to say to me. She tried anger and authority. Both failed. If we had been summer lovers it might have been different, but now in his trouble I seemed to feel Max's right to me and my love, as I had never done before. Penelope might have lectured for everlasting, and I should only have listened, and then gone back to Max's side. As I did.

His arm pressed mine close; he did not say a second time, "Leave me."

"Now, Max, I want to hear."

No answer.

"You know there is something, and we shall never be quite happy till it is told. Say it outright; whatever it is, I shall not mind."

No answer.

"Is it something very terrible?"

"Yes."

"Something that might come between and part us?"

"Yes."

I trembled, though not much, having so strong a belief in the impossibility of parting. Yet there must have been an expression I hardly intended in the cry "Oh, Max, tell me," for he again stopped suddenly, and seemed to forget himself in looking at and thinking of me.

"Stay, Theodora,—you have something to tell me first. Are you better? Have you been growing stronger daily? You are sure?"

"Quite sure. Now—tell me."

He tried to speak once or twice, vainly. At last he said:—

"I—I wrote you a letter."

"I never got it."

"No; I did not mean you should until my death. But my mind has changed. You shall have it now. I have carried it about with me, on the chance of meeting you, these four days. I wanted to give it to you—and—to look at you. Oh, my child, my child."

After a little while, he gave me the letter, begging me not to open it till I was alone at night.

"And if it should shock you—break your heart?"

"Nothing will break my heart."

"You are right, it is too pure and good. God will not suffer it to be broken. Now, good-bye."

For we had reached the gate of Bock-mount. It had never struck me before that I had to bid him adieu here, that he did not mean to go in with me to dinner; and when he refused, I felt it very much. His only answer was, for the second time, "that I did not know what I was saying."

It was now nearly dark, and so misty that I could hardly breathe. Doctor Urquhart insisted on my going in immediately, tied my veil close under my chin, and then hastily untied it.

"Love, do you love me?"

He has told me afterwards, he forgot then for the time being, every circumstance that was likely to part us; everything in the whole world but me. And I trust I was not the only one who felt that it is those alone who? loving as we did, are everything to one another who have most strength to part.

When I came indoors, the first person I met was papa, looking quite bright and pleased; and his first question was:—

"Where is Doctor Urquhart? Penelope said Doctor Urquhart was coming here."

I hardly know what was done during that evening, or whether they blamed Max or not.

All my care was how best to keep his secret, and literally to obey him concerning it.

Of course, I never named his letter, nor made any attempt to read it till I had bidden good night to them all, and smiled at Penelope's grumbling over my long candles and my large fire, "as if I meant to sit up all night." Yes, I had taken all these precautions in a quiet, solemn kind of way, for I did not know what was before me, and I must not fall ill if I could help. I was Max's own personal property.

How cross she was that night, poor Penelope! It was the last time she has ever scolded me.

For some things, Penelope has felt this more than anyone could, except papa, for she is the only one of us who has a clear recollection of Harry.

Now, his name is written, and I can tell it—the awful secret I learned from Max's letter, which no one except me must ever read.

My Max killed Harry. Not intentionally—when he was out of himself and hardly accountable for what he did; in a passion of boyish fury, roused by great cruelty and wrong; but—he killed him. My brother's death, which we believed to be accidental, was by Max's hand.

I write this down calmly, now; but it was awful at the time. I think I must have read on mechanically, expecting something sad, and about Harry likewise; I soon guessed that bad man at Salisbury must have been poor Harry—but I never guessed anything near the truth till I came to the words "I murdered him."

To suppose one feels a great blow acutely at the instant is a mistake—it stuns rather than wounds. Especially when it comes in a letter, read in quiet and alone, as I read Max's letter that night. And—as I remember afterwards seeing in some book, and thinking how true it was—it is strange how soon a great misery grows familiar. Waking up from the first few minutes of total bewilderment, I seemed to have been aware all these twenty years that my Max killed Harry.

O Harry, my brother, whom I never knew—no more than any stranger in the street, and the faint memory of whom was mixed with an indefinite something of wickedness, anguish, and disgrace to us all, if I felt not as I ought, then or afterwards, forgive me. If, though your sister, I thought less of you dead than of my living Max—my poor, poor Max, who had borne this awful burthen for twenty years—Harry, forgive me!

Well, I knew it—as an absolute fact and certainty—though as one often feels with great personal misfortunes, at first I could not realize