He wrung her hand, pitying her more than he did himself, for he knew how little she suspected the true nature of what he intended to tell her.

“God help us both, me to do right, and her to bear it,” was his mental prayer, as he left her at the door of the room where Richard was waiting for her.

There were good and bad angels lugging at Arthur’s heart as he hastened across the fields where the night was falling, darker, gloomier, than ever it fell before.  Would it be a deadly sin to marry Edith Hastings?  Would Nina be wronged if he did? were questions which the bad spirits kept whispering in his ear, and each time that he listened to these questionings, he drifted further and farther away from the right, until by the time his home was reached he hardly knew himself what his intentions were.

Very bright were the lights shining in the windows of his home, and the fire blazed cheerfully in the library, where Nina, pale and fair as a white pond lily, had ordered the supper table to be set, because she thought it would please him, and where, with her golden curls tucked behind her ears, and a huge white apron on, she knelt before the glowing coals, making the nicely-buttered toast he liked so well.  Turning toward him her childish face as he came in, she said,

“See—­Nina’s a nice little housekeeper.  Wouldn’t it be famous if we could live alone, you and I?”

Arthur groaned inwardly, but made her no reply.  Sitting down in his arm-chair, he watched her intently as she made his tea, removed her apron, brushed her curls, and then look her seat at the table, bidding him do the same.  Mechanically he obeyed, affecting to eat for her sake, while his eyes were constantly fastened upon her face.  Supper being over and the table removed, he continued watching her intently as she flitted about the room, now perching herself upon his knee, calling him “her good boy,” now holding a whispered conversation with Miggie, who, she fancied, was there, and again singing to herself a plaintive song she had sung to Dr. Griswold.  When it drew near her bedtime she went to the window, from which the curtain was thrown back, and looking out upon the blackness of the night, said to Arthur,

“The darkness is very dark.  I should think poor Dr. Griswold would be afraid lying there alone in that narrow grave.  What made him die, Arthur?  I didn’t want him to.  It had better been I, hadn’t it?”

She came close to him now, and sitting on his knee held his bearded chin in her hand, while she continued,

“Would my poor boy be very lonesome, knowing that Nina wasn’t here, nor up stairs, nor in the Asylum, nor over at Miggie’s, nor anywhere?  Would you miss me a bit?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

The words came with quiet, gasping sobs, for in his hour of bitterest anguish, Arthur had never for an instant wished her gone—­the little blue-eyed creature clinging so confidingly to him and asking if he would miss her when she was dead.