“It would break his heart, or destroy his reason.  After all he had done and suffered for her!”

Oh! why could she not die before he came?  Seeing her dead body he would forgive her.  She should tell him she loved him still, should always love him.  She would withhold no comfort.  Perhaps he would kill her, if so, Jael must manage so that he should not be taken up or tormented any more, for such a wretch as she was.

But I might as well try to dissect a storm, and write the gusts of a tempest, as to describe all the waves of passion in that fluctuating and agonized heart:  the feelings and the agitation of a life were crowded into those few hours, during which she awaited the lover she had lost.

At last, Jael Dence, though she was also much agitated and perplexed, decided on a course of action.  Just before four o’clock she took Grace upstairs and told her she might see him arrive, but she must not come down until she was sent for.  “I shall see him first, and tell him all; and, when he is fit to see you, I will let you know.”

Grace submitted, and even consented to lie down for half an hour.  She was now, in truth, scarcely able to stand, being worn out with the mental struggle.  She lay passive, with Jael Dence’s hand in hers.

When she had lain so about an hour, she started up suddenly, and the next moment a fly stopped at the door.  Henry Little got out at the gate, and walked up the gravel to the house.

Grace looked at him from behind the curtain, gazed at him till he disappeared, and then turned round, with seraphic joy on her countenance.  “My darling!” she murmured; “more beautiful than ever!  Oh misery! misery!”

One moment her heart was warm with rapture, the next it was cold with despair.  But the joy was blind love; the despair was reason.

She waited, and waited, but no summons came.

She could not deny herself the sound of his voice.  She crept down the stairs, and into her father’s library, separated only by thin folding-doors from the room where Henry Little was with Jael Dence.

Meantime Jael Dence opened the door to Henry Little, and, putting her fingers to her lips, led him into the dining-room and shut the door.

Now, as his suspicions were already excited, this reception alarmed him seriously.  As soon as ever they were alone, he seized both Jael’s hands, and, looking her full in the face, said: 

“One word—­is she alive?”

“She is.”

“Thank god!  Bless the tongue that tells me that.  My good Jael! my best friend!” And, with that, kissed her heartily on both cheeks.

She received this embrace like a woman of wood; a faint color rose, but retired directly, and left her cheek as pale as before.

He noticed her strange coldness, and his heart began to quake.

“There is something the matter?” he whispered.

“There is.”

“Something you don’t like to tell me?”