hesitation, "everybody wondered, and Larry went into the church to ask the reason. 'Mr. and Mrs. Vasher return this afternoon,' the ringers said; and ten minutes after they drove by. I looked for you everywhere, dear. Nell! Nell! do you mind so very much?"
"Mind!" I say, looking at the dimpled, fresh face of my eighteen-year-old sister, "I don't think I mind. I have seen him, Dolly."
"What! And spoken to him?”
"No. He did not see me."
"How long ago?"
Perhaps an hour."
"Don't fret, darling," she says, putting her arm round my neck; "perhaps he won't stay long, and you need not meet him."
No, I need not; but will he not breathe the same air that I breathe—see the same people that I see? Is he not alive and quick, here, instead of a shadow moving somewhere out of my sight? Sooner or later, I have always known Paul must come to the house of his fathers, but not thus—not without warning. He should at least have given me time to get myself away, and now he is here. The whole world was not wide enough to lie between: us and now there is a patch of grass, a few trees and flowers, and that is all. And the woman is with him who took my life in her hand, and trampled it under her foot, and her son is here, hers and Paul's. Ay! she has triumphed over me in very truth, and she is not only Paul Vasher's wife, but the mother of his child.
They must make a handsome family, the dark, strong-faced father, the exquisite mother, the pretty boy. I dare say I shall see it some day. No doubt he has grown to love her. Is she not bound to him by a closer, tenderer tie than he dreamed of, when he swore not to go back to her that Christmas morning? and may
