ther. For some reason he had never liked Haight, though he had taken great pains to conceal his aversion, because Haight was his wife's cousin, and really there was no evident cause for dislike.

"There were a number of people here -friends who had come from a distance to be present at the wedding--and before anyone knew how late it was, the evening had gone. Miss Alice had complained of a headache all day, and looked wretchedly pale and ill. When she went to her room she said to me:

"Don't let anyone disturb me in the morning, Elsie, for I am so tired.'

"I thought that she was going to be ill, such a feverish brilliancy burned through the paleness of her face, and I asked to be allowed to stay with her.

"No, no!' she cried, almost pushing me from the room; 'I can hardly breathe now I should die of suffocation were anyone near me. Only let me rest-let me have quiet.'

"As I closed the door, I heard the key click in the lock. It was a warm night, with sultry dark clouds. I, too, was tired, and slept soundly until long after daylight, and then, remembering Miss Alice's request, I wandered about very quietly in order not to disturb her. People breakfasted whenever they chose, and it was long after eleven o'clock before anyone asked after Miss Alice. Then it was Mr. Llorente; he had come over to consult her about something. I said that I thought Miss Alice was not up yet; that she was very tired, almost ill, and had asked me not to let anyone disturb her. Your father was standing by, and he said quickly:

"She must be awake now. Wait a moment, Llorente, and I will go and tell her that you are here.'

"No, indeed!' Llorente called after him, 'I can wait.' But your father had already gone. 'Go and tell her, Elsie, that it is nothing of importance,' he said, turning to me.

"When I reached the door, your father was trying to open it. He looked strangely excited:

"Bring me your key, Elsie. I can not make her hear.'

"In a moment I had fetched the key. The door was opened and we entered. Alice was not there."

"Go on," cried Roberta, impatiently, as the old woman did not speak.

"That is all; she was not there. The bed had not been touched, everything in the room was as I had seen it the night before, except that upon the bureau a folded slip of paper lay. It read:

"I do not ask to be forgiven, but to be thought of kindly as of one dead, for such I shall be hereafter to all who have known her who once bore unworthily

the name of

ALICE LINGArde.'"

"But, surely," cried Roberta, passionately, "she was found?—she came back again? She could not-with that face -she could not have been so utterly false."

Elsie shook her head:

"With that face she broke her father's heart, deceived all who loved and trusted her."

"And nothing was ever known of her afterward?"

"Nothing. The shock killed her father. They said he never spoke but once, and that was to say, 'My poor child.'"

"And Mr. Llorente?"

"He did everything-for your father was for a long time almost like one insane. In Mr. Haight's room nothing was found but this picture- no word, nothing of his. I took the picture and put it with Miss Alice's things in this trunk. From that day to this no one has looked upon it or asked for it until to-day. In that trunk is her weddingdress, just as it was sent home the day after she left."

During all the recital Elsie had spoken in a strangely impassive voice, dry and husky; but now it trembled, and the

tension of the tearless eyes gave way. "I loved her," she said simply, "and the first tears I shed that day were at night-fall, when this package came."

"And what happened after that?" "Nothing, nothing. By his father's death your father came into possession of the property. You were born three months afterward, with that in your face and smile which made it impossible for your father to endure you in his presence. He could not bring himself to touch or even look at you. But when Fay was born, he lavished all his love upon her; and when we found that the little thing could never walk but with a crutch, I used to think, and I am sure your mother believed, it was a punishment on him for his hardness to you."

"What a hard cruel justice, which makes the innocent suffer for the guilty," said Roberta, sharply. "Put away the picture-it is hateful to me now. I shall never bear to look upon my own face again, since it reminds others of that."

Roberta passed out of the cold dark room, filled it seemed to her with the atmosphere of death, and back into her room, fragrant with the light dreamy

air of advancing spring. The night mare weight was lifted, and she wept with the passion that soonest spends itself in tears. While she had been listening, and while she wept, it seemed to her that the shadow of that other life must forever darken hers, as it had done

that she was herself a helpless toy in the hands of others, or perhaps of fate-that her faults and her virtues were not her own alone, but colored by the tragedy of another's life. For the first time in her young life she was conscious of a feeling of fierce bitter resentment, which cut and bruised her soul until it shocked her into calm, and with that calm, soft as the strains of forgotten music, the lingering vibrations of Sister Agatha's voice thrilled in the court of memory. Nothing the sister had ever said did it seem to Roberta that she had forgotten, and now every word seemed fraught with new meaning. All had been to prepare her for trials, for self-victory. Not cold words of counsel, but words wrung from a heart which had learned to the utmost what passionate longing, striving, failure, and suffering meant.

TH

'HE desire to produce new theories in regard to everything pertaining to man and nature seems to be a human characteristic, and, latterly, to have taken an epidemic form in literary circles, so that the doggerel of thirty years ago has a peculiar and appropriate significance now; for

"It is a melancholy fact in this high-pressure age That something new, no matter what, must always be the rage."

But, as "history repeats itself," and as "there is nothing new under the sun," so many of the "new" things advanced turn out, upon inspection, to be somewhat old and musty, having been laid aside for an age or two, and then brought to the light again for a transient airing. Of this latter sort is the controversy now being waged in relation to the religion of Shakspeare, it being claimed by some that the great dramatist was a Roman Catholic of the most ultra stamp, and by others that he was a Protestant of the strictest sort. Be that as it may, the discussion has not even the dubious merit of novelty, the question having been agitated again and again; leading in earlier times to some notable literary forgeries, emanating from the advocates on either side. Later, we have no less a light than Goethe giving his testimony that Shakspeare was the "poet of the Reformation," and claiming that he was the true "representative of modern Protestantism;" and we have others, scarcely less notable, who declare, variously, that he was an "Ultramontane, with strong religious faith," a "Pantheist," and a "man that had no religion at all." Strange as these conflicting opinions

may appear, wonder ceases in regard to them when it is remembered that they are all eclipsed by a theory, mooted long ago, that there was no real man called William Shakspeare, and that the plays which passed with his name were the works of Marlowe and others.

Now, we find ability and talent conjoined to show that Bacon was not the "father of the Baconian system," and again, that Shakspeare was not the author of the works bearing his name, but that Bacon was, and so on in endless succession, until the mind grows weary in its attempts to follow each fanciful flight, the judgment is entirely bewildered, every "function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not."

With such a history before us, added to present experience, it is, perhaps, hardly surprising that among the newest of the "new lights" that shine with more or less resplendence in an attempted illumination of novel ideas, one should have arisen like a "star in the East," to serve as a beacon-light for the minds still groping through this labyrinth of dark and complicated testimony. It has been reserved for a late writer in the Graphic, under the pseudonym of "Nemo," to announce, with a confidence that he bases on the internal evidence of Shakspeare's writings, this bold and startling theory:

to the advocates and to the opponents of the Catholic theory.

But let him speak for himself. Says "Nemo," in the article referred to:

"A diligent reader of the great dramatist sees so many obstacles in the way of forming a settled conclusion in regard to what Shakspeare's views of God and immortality really were, that sometimes the conclusion seems to be forced upon him that the man was so thoroughly in love and sympathy with God's highest creation-humanity - that he cared not for anything beyond it. This view may, of course, be

erroneous, but it is one which it is hardly possible to

avoid, and upon what other hypothesis is it possible to explain those passages in Hamlet, for instance, in which if Shakspeare had not felt doubt he could not have expressed it?"

Our writer then goes on to say:

"Shakspeare invariably makes his weak characters perplexed and worried by the problems of the soul,'

as Father Hecker would call them; he seems to bring them on the stage to show how unmanly vacillation

and weak conduct are born - not of doubt as to received opinions in regard to the unknown, or of utter disbelief in them—but of worrying over them at all, instead of living the life of intelligent and moral animals"

-whatever "intelligent and moral animals" may mean from his point of view. Now, to the ordinary reader, after being informed that Shakspeare invariably uses his weak characters to express doubt on the subject of the soul's immortality, it will appear strange to see the other assertion, that unless Shakspeare had felt doubts he could not have expressed them. Is it in truth an idiosyncrasy of the world's greatest dramatic genius that he selects his weakest characters as a medium through which to express his inmost thoughts on the most momentous question that has ever agitated the mind of man?

There is no dispute in regard to there being a certain kind of weakness in the character of Hamlet, but it is the weakness of the will, not of the reason; he was as one "propelled, not propelling." "In him," says an able critic, "we see a man habitually subjected to the spiritual part of his nature-communing with thoughts that are not of this world-abstracted from the business of life, yet exhibiting

a most vigorous intellect, and an exquisite taste;" affording us "glimpses of the high and solemn things that belong to our being." Says the brilliant Hazlitt: "Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be." But then he adds: "He is the prince of philosophical speculators, his ruling passion is to think, not to act;" and again: "He is a great moralizer, he is not a commonplace pedant." And, speaking of the play, Hazlitt adds: "It abounds in striking reflections on human life, and has a prophetic truth which is above that of history."

But it is hardly necessary to enter into a defense of the intellectual character of Hamlet. It has been the admiration of cultivated minds the world over, and many of the brightest names that shine in the literary firmament, notable among whom stand those of Goethe, Schlegel, Coleridge, and Macaulay, have thought it a fit subject for their special praise.

With that remembrance constantly in view, it is a matter of some astonishment to find our critic, in his endeavor to show that Hamlet was weak, and thereby to impeach his evidence on the "hereafter," speaking contemptuously of that famous and thoroughly human soliloquy, in which the advantages of life and death are minutely weighed in a mental balance, under a pressure of circumstances that would lead many a weak man to make his quietus, and from which Hamlet himself is deterred only by that sense of "something after death" which gives all thoughtful minds "pause," and causes them rather to bear those ills they have than fly to others they know not of. This admirable speech he parodies thus:

"To be a bung-hole stopper, or not to be a bunghole stopper;" and then adds, as well he may, that "we well may doubt that Shakspeare would ever put it in the mouth of a serious man who should be his mouth-piece." And