It was already midnight, and the two women sat before the fire.  It was the moment when Abel Newt was stealing through his rooms, fastening doors and windows.  Hope Wayne was pale and cold like a statue as she listened to the voice of Mrs. Simcoe, which had a wailing tone pitiful to hear.  After a long silence she began again: 

“What ought I to have done?  Should I have gone away?  That was the easiest course.  But, Hope, the way of duty is not often the easiest way.  I wrote a long letter to the good old Bishop Asbury, who seemed to me like a father, and after a while his answer came.  He told me that I should seek the Lord’s leading, and if that bade me stay—­if that told me that it would be for my soul’s blessing that my heart should break daily—­then I had better remain, seeing that the end is not here—­that here we have no continuing city, and that our proud hearts must be bruised by grief, even as our Saviour’s lowly forehead was pierced with thorns.

“So I staid.  It was partly pity for your mother, who began to droop at once.  It was partly that I might keep my wound bleeding for my soul’s salvation; and partly—­I see it now, but I could not then—­because I believed, as before God I do now believe, that in his secret heart I was the woman your father loved, and I could not give him up.

“Your mother’s lover wrote to me at once, I discovered afterward, but his letters were intercepted, for your grandfather was a shrewd, resolute man.  Then he came to Pinewood, but he was not allowed to see your mother.  The poor boy was frantic; but before he could effect any thing your mother was the wife of Colonel Wayne.  Then, in the same ship in which he had come from India, he returned; and after he was gone all his letters were given to me.  I wrote to him at once.  I told him every thing about your mother, but there was not much to tell.  She never mentioned his name after her marriage.  There were gay parties given in honor of the wedding, and her delicate, drooping, phantom-like figure hung upon the arm of her handsome, elegant husband.  People said that her maidenly shyness was beautiful to behold, and that she clung to her husband like the waving ivy to the oak.

“She did not cling long.  She was just nineteen when she was married—­she was not twenty when you were born—­she was just twenty when they buried her.  Oh!  I did not think of myself only, but of her, when I heard the saintly youth breathe that plaintive prayer, ’Draw them to thee, for they wearily labor:  they are heavily laden, gracious Father! oh, give them rest!’

“’No chilling winds or pois’nous breath
     Can reach that healthful shore: 
  Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
     Are felt and fear’d no more.’”

“And my father?” asked Hope, in a low voice.