“Fortune favors us,” was her reply, as she went back to her daughter, whose long, death-like swoon almost wrung from her the secret.

But Anna revived, and with the first indication of returning consciousness, the cold, hard woman stifled all her better feelings, and then tried to think she was acting only for the good of her child.  For a long time Anna appeared to be in a kind of benumbed torpor, requesting to be left alone, and shuddering if Mr. Everett’s name were mentioned in her presence.  It was in vain that ’Lena strove to comfort her, telling her there might be some mistake.  Anna refused to listen, angrily bidding ’Lena desist, and saying frequently that she cared but little what became of herself now.  A species of recklessness seemed to have taken possession of her, and when her mother one day carelessly remarked that possibly Captain Atherton would claim the fulfillment of her promise, she answered, in the cold, indifferent tone which now marked her manner of speaking, “Let him.  I am ready and willing for the sacrifice.”

“Are you in earnest?” asked Mrs. Livingstone, eagerly.

“In earnest?  Yes—­try me and see,” was Anna’s brief answer, which somewhat puzzled her mother, who would in reality have preferred opposition to this unnatural passiveness.

But anything to gain her purpose, she thought, and drawing Anna closely to her side, she very gently and affectionately told her how happy it would make her could she see her the wife of Captain Atherton, who had loved and waited for her so long, and who would leave no wish, however slight, ungratified.  And Anna, with no shadow of emotion on her calm, white face, consented to all that her mother asked, and when next the captain came, she laid her feverish hand in his, and with a strange, wild light beaming from her dark blue eyes, promised to share his fortunes as his wife.

“’Twill be winter and spring,” said she, with a bitter, mocking laugh, “’Twill be winter and spring, but it matters not.”

Many years before, when a boy of eighteen, Captain Atherton had loved, or fancied he loved, a young girl, whose very name afterward became hateful to him, and now, as he thought of Anna’s affection for Malcolm, he likened it to his own boyish fancy, believing she would soon get over it, and thank him for what he had done.

That night Anna saw the moon and stars go down, bending far out from her window, that the damp air might cool her burning brow, and when the morning sun came up the eastern horizon, its first beams fell on the golden curls which streamed across the window-sill, her only pillow the livelong night.  On ’Lena’s mind a terrible conviction was fastening itself—­Anna was crazed.  She saw it in the wildness of her eye, in the tones of her voice, and more than all, in the readiness with which she yielded herself to her mother’s schemes, “But it shall not be,” she thought, “I will save her,” and then she knelt before her aunt, imploring her to spare her daughter—­not to sacrifice her on the altar of mammon.