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cinders were searing his flesh and scorching the hair from his uncovered head. I could think of nothing but the pictures I have seen of the old martyrs, and, to my eyes, there will always be a sort of halo about his scarred face, for he saved your life, darling, and—”

A well-known step on the stairs sent the quick color to Amy's face, and interrupted her speech. She knew it was Mr. Russel's step, and half suspected the clear, silvery tones, that mingled with his deeper one, were Miss Livingston's. She was correct in her impression, and the elegant lady, clad in rich and costly robes, with jewels on her fingers and at her throat, came gracefully and cordially into the humble chamber.

She was social and courteous, but with a little air of condescension that made Amy glad when the call was over, and the last rustle of her silken robes had died away on the stairs. And beside, she could not help seeing how eagerly Paul Russel watched every movement of the graceful figure, and, though he evidently tried to appear as usual, his interest in Alice's spiritual condition was plainly eclipsed by his interest in Miss Livingston's material one.

"Amy, dear, I am afraid it is very wrong, but I think I don't like Miss Livingston very well."

Amy did not reply immediately, she was thinking; by-and-by she said abruptly:

"Alice, where have I seen Miss Livingston ?" "She was on the Bermuda with us, you know."

"I don't mean that. I was ill, you know, nearly the whole voyage. I do not remember noticing her once, and do not think I saw her. But somewhere I have seen that face. It seems a great while ago, as everything does that happened in those old happy days, before we knew how long, and weary, and hard it was possible for them to be. It was in a crowd that I saw her, and I distinctly remember that Harry was with me, and he has been dead near three years. I recollect, because he called her some sort of a queen-ah! I have it now! Alice, don't you remember when Harry and I went to the "Royal" to witness the debut of Mademoiselle Olivia? and how you were ill and could not go? Well, there is where I saw that face. I should know it among a thousand."

"O Amy, you must be mistaken. It is not at all likely that Miss Livingston was ever an actress. There may be a strong resemblance -such things happen unaccountably some

times-but it is only a resemblance, be sure of that."

"I tell you, Alice, I know! Now, that I have the clue, every tone and gesture comes back to me perfectly, and I know there are not two women in the world so entirely and utterly alike in look, tone, gesture and carriage. But, Alice, O how white you are! I am so thoughtless; I might have known so much excitement would tire you. Lie here on the lounge-let me arrange the pillows. There, is that right, pet?" stooping down and kissing the white, thin lips.

A faint smile flickered over the wasted face, as with an air of utter exhaustion she lay back among the pillows, whose snowy whiteness scarce rivalled the pure, shadowy face pressed against them.

When Miss Livingston stepped into her carriage she ordered the driver to make the tour of the principal streets, including Carmarthen street; adding, by way of excuse, that having seen the main characters in the drama, it would be in keeping to end by visiting its locale. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Vanstone's office was in that immediate neighborhood had some slight influence in her decision. Certain it was, a visible nervousness possessed her as she neared that locality, which Mr. Russel attributed to her quick sympathy with suffering. But he did not note the deepening crimson in her cheek, or the softened light in her eyes, when, a moment after, she bowed, with one of her brightest smiles, as a thoughtful student face, with clear, truthful gray eyes, looked suddenly up from their writing at one of the little dingy windows.

They rode leisurely through the broad streets, pausing occasionally to admire some fine view. Perhaps it would have been difficult for Paul Russel to analyze the peculiar feelings with which Olive Livingston inspired him. That she attracted him powerfully he did not attempt to deny. Her presence overpowered and intoxicated him, and her voluptuous beauty held his senses in thrall. But the very intensity of the attraction tired and exhausted him. He did not realize it while the spell was on, but after he had left her presence a sense of nerveless languor and a sort of restless dissatisfaction oppressed him. It was so different from the feeling of rest and strength, the earnest longing for greater purity and holiness of thought and life, that burned in his soul when he sat in that humble chamber in Germain street, and, while he

taught, learned himself, of heaven from one who had already tasted of its joys. And then he loved the sweet face at the window, with its shifting lights and shades, its flushing and paling, its tenderness and its pain, drifting like ripples across the surface of some pure, woodland lake. He loved to watch the pretty, changeful face and busy fingers, that were always stitching, and think how much better and purer a man might be who had such a sweet face and true, earnest spirit always in

his home.

But some strange glamor was upon him while with Miss Livingston-a subtle something which he could not, or at least did not, resist, drew him towards her. And that day, as she sat beside him in her splendid carriage, her magnificent beauty enhanced by the richness and elegance of her attire, he forgot, while looking into her glowing face, all lofty thought, all noble work, all pure aspirationforgot in short everything but the passionate, bewitching face of the woman beside him.

CHAPTER IX.

OLIVE LIVINGSTON had had too much experience with the world not to understand the symptoms which Mr. Russel exhibited. But while it gratified her vanity, it awoke no answering sentiment in her own bosom. The only love that was worth anything to herthe only eyes which she cared to have look their passion into hers-worshipped at another shrine. What was all her wealth, and position, and beauty worth, so long as this Mordecai failed to bow down before it. And like another Haman she began the construction of a gallows for the accomplishment of her desires. Quite unexpectedly she found a workman to her hand-one who had served a long apprenticeship with his master and was very ready at his work. It happened in this wise.

One evening after she had sat at her window and watched, with burning eyes, the figures of a youth and maiden, sitting in an unmistakably lover-like attitude under the little vine-covered porch of the Wallace cottage, she was measurably relieved, by the announcement of Asa, that a man was at the door who wanted to speak with the mistress. "Bring him in here!" she said, sharply. "Into the drawing-room, miss ?" "Certainly. What is there remarkable about that?"

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"He's rather a hard-looking chap. I shouldn't want to meet him in an out of the way place. He looks villain,' whether he is or not."

"I am not afraid of Satan himself, to-night! Bring him in."

Nothwithstanding her assertion, a sudden shiver ran over her when the man, who came in with a stealthy, cat-like tread, lifted a pair of bleared, blood-shot, deep-set gray eyes to her face with a curious, continued gaze. He was a large, muscular man, though evidently worn by dissipation. He was coarsely dressed, and his unkempt hair of heavy iron gray fell low over his dark, lowering brow. Take him all in all he was not exactly the man for a lady's boudoir, but he sat down, however, with an air of quiet assurance that annoyed Miss Livingston exceedingly, and she mentally resolved to get rid of him as speedily as possible.

"What is your business with me, sir?" she demanded, haughtily, stepping back as he approached.

"I am in want of some money."

"A beggar!" she ejaculated, contemptuously. "Not exactly, my proud lady. You are the owner of Lindenwold ?"

"I am, sir. Did you come here to ask that? Any countryman could have told you thus much."

"Every countryman doesn't know quite as much about it as you and I," he replied, with a leer.

"Did you come here to insult me ?" she cried, with flashing eyes."

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"A bargain, ma'am; which, if I mistake not, will be for your interest full as much as mine."

"You are drunk!" she exclaimed, turning to the bell rope. He put out his hand-his black, grimmy hand-and actually laid it on her white, dainty shoulder. She faced suddenly round, trembling with passion at the indignity. "How dare you!" she demanded, her eyes flaming.

"By heavens! miss, you'd make your fortune on the stage. If anything happens, you can try it, you know."

Her first thought was, "this is some miserable trick of Geoffry's to extort more money from me," and she smiled to herself to think

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"You! Perhaps you would condescend to price-or stop. You say you do not like this inform me," she said, scornfully.

"Certainly. Silence."

"Silence! Are you insane? What can you know that will affect me, if you proclaimed it upon the house-tops ?"

"I know who who is the heir of Lindenwold," he said, coolly, looking at her from under his shaggy brows.

She paled percep ibly, but still kept up a show of bravery.

"Really, your knowledge is not so very wonderful, since it is a commonly established fact."

"It is not an established fact, but it is in my power to make it so. I hold in my possession certain papers, that once given to the true heir, would turn you from Lindenwold as much a beggar as I. It rests with you to accept my offer or reject it. I do not bear the man who really owns Lindenwold any good. will; but money I must have, and if you are not willing to pay it, probably he is."

"You are mistaken," she said, with an effort to be calm; "the mother and child never arrived here; they both perished on the passage, if indeed they ever left there at all, of which there is no proof."

"The mother died, but the child did not. He lived, is still living, and you know him.”

"I do not! You think to extort money from me by threats. I tell you there is no proof that they ever left Liverpool."

"Liverpool! Who said anything about Liverpool? You are on the wrong tack altogether. Perhaps it would be worth your while to listen to what I have to propose."

Faint and giddy with a suspicion of the truth, Olive Livingston sank into a chair and motioned him to proceed. The man told his story in a low, bitter tone, watching his listener steadily with those keen, deep-set, gray eyes. But all he could see was the white pallor of her face, which was turned toward the window. She did not speak until he had concluded, then she said, without moving or turning her head:

man ?"

"I said that I hated his parents, and hated him because he was their child!" he said, in a tone of compressed passion.

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Well, if you could do something to injure him-I don't mean bodily injury-it must not be that, mind!-but something to strike at his heart, to make him suffer as you have suffered."

His eyes fairly blazed with excitement, and his hands clenched nervously at the table by which he sat. Miss Livingston so far overcame her repugnance as to take a chair beside the table where her strange guest sat, for the purpose of forming this singular alliance. If I had as much faith in a personal devil as some people have, I should say, unhesitatingly, that he came and completed the party!

The next day Miss Livingston rode into the city to do some shopping, and made it in her way to call at her lawyer's, Mr. Vanstone's, and seemed quite surprised when Arthur St. Orme answered her summons. She could not have been more so, if she had not happened to know that Mr. Vanstone had gone up to Fredericton for a week!

It was quite astonishing how very perplexing and unintelligible she found her business affairs, and what an amount of explanations were necessary, even involving the necessity of St. Orme's coming up to Lindenwold that evening. He hinted that perhaps Mr. Vanstone would understand the matter better, but she was quite sure he would do equally as well. And so he promised, with perhaps a little secret feeling of pleasure at the prospect of a tete-a-tete with so beautiful and high-bred a lady as Miss Livingston.

Then Miss Livingston drove to the Commercial and drew a hundred pounds, which she carelessly thrust in a heavy, crimson silk purse, and stepped into her carriage, and was driven leisurely up Prince William street. She looked pleased and satisfied, and a smile hovered, like a tender thought, about the full, crimson lips. It was an elegant carriage, and

the span of noble chestnuts did not disgrace it. Many an admiring eye was turned toward the carriage and its charming occupant. She knew it, and her darkening eye and heightened color told that the love of admiration was one of the ruling passions of her life. Perhaps she was not displeased, when a crowd in Duke street caused them to pause an instant, to see the fine face of the young rector at her carriage window. In the midst of her cordial greetings, the door of a drinking-shop, but a few feet from her, opened, and a young man of some seven or eight-and-twenty emerged with an unsteady gait, and crossed the street directly in front of her horse's heads. If only something would startle them! The thought flashed through her brain, and for the moment Olive Livingston was in heart a fratricide. Something about the horses attracted the man's eye, and he glanced back. A look of surprise lighted his stolid face, and lifting his hat, he made a ludicrous bow and flourish towards the occupant of the carriage. Miss Livingston tried to put on an indifferent manner, and to appear amused, but there was an angry red in her cheek, and a fire in her eye that she could not quite hide, and which embarrassed both parties so much, that both felt relieved when the street was clear, and the interview thus necessarily terminated.

"Am I to be disgraced and insulted in this manner, in the public streets, by him ?" she muttered, through her shut teeth. "Would it be much of a crime, I wonder, to rid the world of such a fellow ?" She shuddered and drew her shawl closer about her-these autumn winds were getting really chilly.

That evening Arthur St. Orme came out to Lindenwold. Miss Livingston herself had appointed the hour, and it was so close upon office hours, that he had not time to run down to the cottage even for a moment, although he promised himself that he would hurry through the business, and step in a moment before he went back to the city. He wanted to look in Annie's blue eyes, and perhaps, with a lover's freedom, hold her in his arms a moment, before he went back to the bustle, and confusion, and weariness of another day's toil. He stopped at Mr. Vanstone's a large portion of the time now, only coming home Saturdays, and once or twice for an evening in the course of the week.

But his thought of seeing Annie that night was defeated, for never was business in such urgent need of attention as Miss Livingston's, and never was client so agreeable and suave

before. And long before Miss Livingston had released him, the lights in the cottage were out; but poor little Annie sat at her chamber window, watching the red glow which came through the crimson curtains of the Lindenwold library, with a heavier heart than five months before she had sat, that first night of her coming, and watched the steady tramp, tramp, of a pair of unconscious feet through the June dew.

CHAPTER X.

IN the humble chamber in Germain street, there sat an unbidden guest. And yet, stern and unrelenting, he waited in grim silence, while choking sobs and pleading prayers fell alike unheeded. The fair face among the pillows was little altered, save that a serener smile parted the pale lips, and the great brown eyes mirrored more the celestial brightness of that heaven to which they were so near.

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"O Alice, if you could only take me with you! You will see them all-father, and mother, and Harry-and I shall be toiling on here alone, all alone!" And the sweet voice died away in a sad, unutterable wail.

"Amy, it is His will. You must not murmur at it, darling. Maybe, if I am permitted, I shall come back to comfort you. I have suffered so much that—perhaps it is selfishbut I am glad, save that it grieves you, to be released. You will not want for friends, dear-"

A frowsy head rose suddenly from the window-seat, and a choking voice exclaimed:

"If there is ever anything the likes of me can do to be of sarvice to such a sweet young creature" And then the voice quite broke down, and the frowsy head, with its broad, scarred face, went suddenly down on the window again.

"God bless you, faithful, tender friend!" said the steady voice of the dying girl. "Come here, Timmy, I want to look in your honest face once more."

She took his big hand in her thin, white one, and carried it reverently to her lips. He made a deprecatory gesture, but she said:

"They saved my life once, and they have served me often since. It is a poor return, but it is all I have to give; but my heart is in the act, simple as it is, and you will think of it sometimes, and of the little girl who gave it you with her dying breath ?"

“O my sweet, darling young lady, it's a rich man I am with so priceless a gift, sure! I'd

gladly go through a thousand fires, if I could save your precious young life!" he said, with a wistful look on his tearful face.

But no such sacrifice could be accepted, for while the grave, solemn words of prayer went up from the lips of the young rector, who sat by her bedside, with a smile still on her lips, and the seal of eternal peace on her stainless brow, the pure spirit of Alice Clair went noiselessly out with the waiting messenger, and only the beautiful clay remained.

It was a small procession that followed the young English girl to her humble burial place for Amy insisted on going as far as she could into the valley of shadows with her dead. Miss Livingston came in to the funeral, and very considerately called and took Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone, and Arthur St. Orme. Paul Russel went himself with Amy, who, poor child, chided herself for the faint glow of happiness that crept into her bleeding heart, as she leaned on his strong arm, and listened to his earnest words of faith and hope. And Paul Russel, forgetting for a time the blandishments and fascinations of Olive Livingston, felt his heart glow with a tender, protecting fondness for the lonely little orphan, and thought it would be very sweet to comfort her always, in all her sorrows, and have her lean as confidingly upon him as she did then. And Timmy Bryne, who was just behind them, thought, as he lifted his face for a moment from the damp folds of his red silk handkerchief, that the rector "desarved a good roasting in purgatory, that he did, if he left that sweet English violet for the haughty lady of Lindenwold!" For Timmy had very keen eyes, and saw what perhaps the parties themselves

suspected.

had never more than half

But while this was transpiring in the city, a strange thing happened to Lindenwold. The servants were all away, save Asa, and he might as well have been, for he was sound asleep in the stable loft.

Annie Wallace, who had taken to watch ing Lindenwold almost constantly of late, saw from her chamber window, a man go round the north wing and enter the house by the side entrance. At first thought, she supposed it to be Arthur. He had been there several times of late, and somehow she fancied that he seemed annoyed when she had spoken of it. And so she called her pride to her aid, and grew cool and distant, and even went so far as to refuse to see him upon one or two occasions, when he had come out on purpose

to see her. At first, Arthur had a dim suspicion that it might be because of his visits at Lindenwold, and he would have explained to her, only she would not give him the chance; and beside, Miss Livingston had once or twice Intimated that Annie was really getting quite partial to young Randolph, the son of a neighboring farmer; but then, she added, "Annie was but a child yet, and probably didn't know her own mind;" adding, with one of her peculiar glances, that “probably his interests were safe, as Annie would obey her mother, and everybody knew her mother's preferences."

Arthur knew that John Randolph had at one time been deeply in love with Annie, and the uncertainty of his own success had given him more than one heartache. But that was a long time ago, and since the day when she had put her little hand in his, and declared that "she didn't care for John Randolph one bit," admitting at the same time, with many a shy blush and smile, that she did care for somebody else, he had never doubted her until since Miss Livingston came. And so a coolness grew up between them, and Miss Livingston, looking on, smiled quietly to herself, and thought how very soon she should be able to defy Geoffry, his claims and his secrets.

The three months which she had asked, were, indeed, only a clever little ruse to gain time, which Geoffry, shrewd as he was, did not suspect. It was this thought that gave the exultant flash to her eyes, as, glancing from her carriage window on her return from the burial of Alice Clair, she saw him walking leisurely down the street. That same night Arthur St. Orme had resolved to see Annie and have a full explanation. He had tried to put the thought out of his mind, but his love was of too long a growth to be thus easily eradicated, and he had resolved to see Annie, and if she no longer cared for him, to leave the old home and all its tender associations, for some place-he hardly knew or cared where-where everything did not so continually remind him of the happy past. Somehow, as he thought it over, all his troubles dated from the arrival of Miss Livingston. It was not, therefore, with any very joyful feelings that, half way to Lindenwold, he met Miss Livingston, who, looking out with a pale, excited face, informed him that she was coming to town expressly to see Mr. Vanstone, but that he would do equally as well; and bidding the driver turn the horses' heads, she

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