“That is your hypothesis,” was the bright retort.  “We Dorrances have justly earned a reputation for dissretion by the excellent preservation of our own secrets, and those committed to our keeping by our friends.  My motto is, tell others nothing about yourself which they cannot learn without your confession.  An autobiography is always either a bore or a blunder.  Not that I would regulate the number and nature of your divulgations to your wife, Herbert.  As to Winston’s unlucky hit this morning, it was mere fortuity.  I have never felt myself called upon to enlighten him in family secrets, and his is an incurious disposition.  He never asks idle questions.  He has a marvellous faculty of striking home-blows in the dark, but that is no reason why one should betray his wound by crying out.  Apropos to darkness, may I ring for a lamp, or will the light hurt your eyes?”

“The fire-light is more trying,” rejoined Mabel, pushing a screen before the sofa, and placing herself where she could, in its shadow, hold her husband’s hand.

It was cold and limp when she lifted it, but tightened upon hers with the instinctive grip of gratitude too profound to be uttered.

She had never been so near loving him as at the instant in which he believed he had incurred her ever-lasting displeasure.  Generosity and pity were fast undoing the petrifying influences of her early disappointment, their mutual reserve, and tacit misunderstandings.  If half he feared were true, his need of her affection, her counsel and companionship were dire.  Whatever wrong he had done her by keeping back the tale of hereditary infirmity, he had suffered more from the act than she could ever do.  Who knew how much of what she, with others, mistook for constitutional phlegm and studied austerity, was the outward sign of the battle between dread of his inherited doom and the resolve of an iron will to defy natural laws and the sentence of destiny herself, and hold reason upon her rickety throne?

Heaven’s gentlest and kindest angels were busy with Mabel Dorrance’s heart in that reverie, and, as they wrought, the cloud that had rested there for fifteen years broke into rainbow smiles that illumined her countenance into the similitude of the shining ones.

“I bless Thee, Father, the All-wise and Ever-merciful, that she is safe!” was her voiceless thanksgiving.

No more bitter tears over the lonely, sunken grave! no more hearkening, with aching, never-to-be-satisfied ears for the patter of the “little feet that never trod.”  The great sorrow of her life that had been good in His sight was at length a blessing in hers.  Her “hereafter” of knowledge of His doings had come to her in this world.

“Does it rain, Peter?” questioned Mrs. Aylett of the lad who brought in lights.

“Yes, ma’am.  It’s beginnin’ to storm powerful!” he said, respectfully communicative.

“Your master has not come?”