Mr. Laurance kissed her fair forehead, and walked away; and passing his arm around Regina, Mr. Palma drew her forward across the lawn till they reached a branching lilac near the verandah.

Here he paused, took off his glasses, and looked proudly and tenderly down into the violet eyes that even now met his so shyly.

“My Lily, to-morrow at this hour you will be my wife.”

His haughty lips were smiling as they sought hers, and with her lovely flushed face half hidden on his shoulder, and one small hand clinging to his, she watched her father’s figure approaching the steps.

Mrs. Laurance sat with her folded hands resting on the rail of the balustrade, her head slightly drooped upon her bosom; and the beautiful face was lighted by the dying sunset splendour, that seemed to kindle a nimbus around the golden head, and rendered her in her violet drapery like some haloed Mater Dolorosa, treading alone the Via Crucis.

Dusky shadows under the melancholy brown eyes made them appear darker, deeper, almost prophetic, and over her lips drifted a fragment from “Regret”

                           “Oh that word Regret! 
        There have been nights and morns, when we have sighed,
        ’Let us alone Regret!  We are content
        To throw thee all our past, so thou wilt sleep
        For aye.’  But it is patient, and it wakes;
        It hath not learned to cry itself to sleep,
        But plaineth on the bed that it is bard."...

“Ahyes.  In the room of revenge reigns regret.  Where is my revenge?  It gleamed like nectar, and when I drained it consuming poison clung to my lips.  To revenge is to regret—­for ever!  To-day how utterly widowed; to-morrow—­childless.  Oh, stranded life!  Infelice!  Infelice!”

Upon the stone steps stood the man whom her eyes, turned toward the distant hill-tops, had not yet seen, but when the passionate pathos of that voice which had so often charmed and swayed its audiences died away in a sob, a musical yet very tremulous tone fell on the evening air: 

“Minnie,—­my wife!  After almost twenty years of neglect, injustice, and wrong, can the husband of your youth, and the father of your child, hope for pardon?”

“There is no ruined life beyond the smile of heaven,
And compensating grace for every loss is given,
The Coliseum’s shell is loved of flower and vine,
And through its shattered rents the peaceful planets shine.”

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co London & Edinburg