"All faith, Rose."

"She has nothing at stake," thought the younger.

a farce to fancy she loved him, as if a woman of her temperament ever could love!"

And though this might have delighted Rose a month ago, she was strangely indifferent to it now.

XII.

THE DREGS IN THE CUP.

Ir had been a peculiar summer day, and was now a peculiar summer night. An August day, with a stillness in the air that could be felt. A tawny atmosphere that only comes in seasons of drought, through which glimmered underlying shades of purple. A sky full of scudding clouds, betokening some commotion at hand. Farmers predicted a shower, and prayed for it as well, for the earth was parched and brown, the trees drooped their long dusty arms with imploring gestures. Although some streaks of purple-black, with yellowish edges, hung low in the south, nothing came of it. The sun dropped down, a ball of fire, visible through a glowing veil, lest his lustre should smite too severely the withering earth.

After sunset a few gusts of wind blew up fiercely, twisting the trees until they groaned and creaked, and roaring through the valleys. Several broad sheets of lightning played over the sky, looking more like a midnight aurora than like a storm. Yet there was a peculiar monotone in the haunting breeze, a thrill of electricity in every current of air, not sufficiently charged to bring the elements to a crisis. Presently there came cool sweeps from the south-east, most reviving. Ragged edges of blue pierced the threatening black, and a few stars made their way through the straggling vapor.

At the old gray stone house there was a peculiar quiet brooding everywhere. Claudia watched the far-off heavens, with their evanescent flashes and restless purple drifts that hurried to and fro. She was in a curious mood of expectancy, the more susceptible, perhaps, because she had been so deeply touched of

late; brought into a more intimate connection, as it were, with a world of hopes and fears.

Because she was so pure, so sacred to herself, so rich in her own heart, this love was the more to her. It had brought her a heavenly peace, a restful content. She enshrined it in her innermost being, made it the choicest luxury of life. To have thought it a necessity, to have leaned upon it, or in any manner to have extracted strength from it, would have been to lower it in her eyes. It was a sacred flame, kept burning upon the soul's purest altar, to be forever veiled from rude eyes. Rightly did L. E. L. say, "A woman's love is essentially lonely and spiritual. It is the heathenism of the heart; she herself has created the glory and beauty with which the idol of her altar stands invested."

Claudia Varian's faith was profound. Her experience had been so narrow that no rude shocks had ever come to belief. She went to bed in a serene and contented state of mind, as different from the peace before she knew John Brevoort as the fullest life can be from a mere negative existence. She fell into a half dreamy, half wakeful state, steeped in a sort of delicious languor that did not deprive her of entire consciousness of self.

O, why is not happiness the end of all perfect love? Why must we linger on the blessed shore only a brief moment, drink in one long, heavenly draught, and then be hurried down the stream by wild and fearful storms, until blinded, drenched, utterly wrecked among the fierce breakers, we stretch forth imploring hands, and utter agonizing cries, to the pitiless elements around us? There may be some happy islands of the blest, and a few souls, under Heaven's cherishing smiles, win their way to the peaceful shores; but too many of us, if we prevail at all, do it through agonies that shadow the future as with drops of crimson blood..

Was it a dream that some one came and kissed her? Warm, throbbing lips touched with despairing passion? Is that elec

tric chord, binding souls together, so keen that at times they can be disembodied and float through space?

She opened her eyes wide. She sat up in the bed, every pulse thrilling with a nameless influence, deepening into terror. What white thing floated across her vision? What step went softly down the stairs, imagined, rather than heard? The moon was nearly at its full, though it had been obscured much of the evening by great ramparts of clouds. Now breaking through a rift, it shone in at the window, and fell over Rose's bed in a long silvery ray. There was the pillow, white, daintily ruffled, one of the girl's fancies; there was the impression her sunny head had made. The sheet and counterpane were smoothly folded, but a little hollow through the middle showed that the occupant was no longer there.

She heard the bolt creak in the hall door. At any other time she would have thought it the groaning of the old sycamore. She sprang up, her senses brought to one keen focus. There was no Rose in the bed. A white, wraith-like thing was skimming along the road, as if floating on the wind.

Claudia gave no alarm. There was a long, black Spanish cloak of her father's hanging against the wall. Barbara had been airing it through the day. Hastily wrapping herself in this, and finding some shoes, she followed noiselessly. Only one thought could gain entrance to her brain - that Rose had risen in a dream, or under the influence of somnambulism, and gone forth ignorantly. She had been moody and capricious of late, shutting every one out of her life with an angry impatience that her two companions seldom cared to rouse. How still the night was! A few crickets and other insects sent forth faint, fearful chirps; an uncertain air wandered up and down with an inarticulate throb akin to pain. The dew was so heavy that the roadside paths were literally drenched, and every stir shook out a rain of fragrance. Claudia shivered. Yet as she followed the white figure flying in the distance no special fear entered her mind. Indeed what danger was there?

The moon passed under a cloud. Here and there, in the breaks of the dun purple, floated a long streak of white; some aerial bark freighted with stars, sailing through wondrous seas. Years afterwards she remembered the weird, vivid picture.

Under the old poplars skirting the road why, she was going to Crofton Rock. What spirit lured her thither? Claudia quickened her pace as Rose plunged into an opening in the wood. How well she seemed to remember the turns; for that she was awake had never once entered Claudia's mind. No, she was not going to the Rock. On into the darkness of the wood, never once looking behind. The dry leaves crunched beneath her feet, the tangled undergrowth was impatiently thrust aside, its rustle effectually precluding the suspicion of a follower. Great tree boles, festooned with mossy parasites, tender saplings, sturdy oaks she knew them all, and could see them even in the darkness. They trod the pungent sweetness out of the winter-green, and the branches shook down an aromatic dew. Here the forest became more dense, and the trickle of the stream winding about seemed like phantom music. The ground grew lower, and some distance beyond there was a sluggish pond, stagnant and ghostly. Around the spot vegetation was rank. Trailing, poisonous vines, whose berries ripened and decayed; blossoms of deadly nightshade, hanging stems of ivy, with its thick waxen leaves and peculiar odor. No one ever sought it. Even Claudia had no taste for its wild, unwholesome solitude.

The pond or swamp made a decided break in the midst of the wood. The trees at its edge being mostly cedars, had no long branches to arch overhead. The moon, sailing in midheaven, broke from the hosts of darkness, and dropped down a sheet of silver. At one side a ledge of rock gave the water a sort of abrupt shore. Rose stepped lightly, flying from point to point, and then paused, shaking back her shining hair with the old imperious gesture, used alike in pleasure or pain. Of what was she thinking?