"Stop, Sir, stop!" said his companion, drawing herself up and waving him back; "I can not hear you talk so. I am engaged."

Abel turned pale. Grace Plumer was frightened. He sprang forward and seized her hand.

"Oh! Grace, hear me but one word! You knew that I loved you, and you allowed me to come. In honor, in truth, before God, you are mine!"

She struggled to release her hand. As she looked in his face she saw there an expression which assured her that he was capable of saying any thing, of doing any thing; and she trembled to think how much she might be--how much any woman is--in the power of a desperate man.

"Indeed, Mr. Newt, you must let me go!"

"Grace, Grace, say that you love me!"

The frightened girl broke away from him, and ran toward the door. Abel followed her, but the door opened, and Sligo Moultrie entered.

"Oh, Sligo!" cried Grace, as he put his arm around her.

Abel stopped and bowed.

"Pardon me, Miss Plumer. Certainly Mr. Moultrie will understand the ardor of a passion which in his case has been so fortunate. I am sorry, Sir,"

he said, turning to Sligo, "that my ignorance of your relation to Miss Plumer should have betrayed me. I congratulate you both from my soul!"

He bowed again, and before they could speak he was gone. The tone of his voice lingering upon their ears was like a hiss. It was a most sinister felicitation.

CHAPTER LIV.

CLOUDS AND DARKNESS.

"At least, Miss Amy--at least, we shall be friends."

Amy Waring sat in her chamber on the evening of the day that Lawrence Newt had said these words. Her long rich brown hair clustered upon her shoulders, and the womanly brown eyes were fixed upon a handful of withered flowers. They were the blossoms she had laid away at various times--gifts of Lawrence Newt, or consecrated by his touch.

She sat musing for a long time. The womanly brown eyes were soft with a look of aching regret rather than of sharp disappointment. Then she rose--still holding the withered remains--and paced thoughtfully up and down the room. The night hours passed, and still she softly paced, or tranquilly seated herself, without the falling of a tear, and only now and then a long deep breath rather than a sigh.

At last she took all the flowers--dry, yellow, lustreless--and opened a sheet of white paper. She laid them in it, and the brown womanly eyes looked at them with yearning fondness. She sat motionless, as if she could not prevail upon herself to fold the paper. But at length she sank gradually to her knees--a sinless Magdalen; her brown hair fell about her bending face, and she said, although her lips did not move, "To each, in his degree, the cup is given. Oh, Father! strengthen each to drain it and believe!"

She rose quietly and folded the paper, with the loving care and lingering delay with which a mother smooths the shroud that wraps her baby. She tied it with a pure white ribbon, so that it looked not unlike a bridal gift; and pressing her lips to it long and silently, she laid it in the old drawer. There it still remained. The paper was as white, the ribbon was as pure as ever. Only the flowers were withered. But her heart was not a flower.

"Well, Aunt Martha," said she, several months after the death of old Christopher Burt, "I really think you are coming back to this world again."

The young woman smiled, while the older one busily drove her needle.

"Why," continued Amy, "here is a white collar; and you have actually smiled at least six times in as many months!"

The older woman still said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural--more human, as it were--and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared was certainly less obvious.

"Amy," she said at length, "God leads his erring children through the dark valley, but he does lead them--he does not leave them. I did not know how deeply I had sinned until I heard the young man Summerfield, who came to see me even in this room."

She looked up and about, as if to catch some lingering light upon the wall.

"And it was Lawrence Newt's preacher who made me feel that there was hope even for me."

She sewed on quietly.

"I thank God for those two men; and for one other," she added, after a little pause.

Amy only looked, she did not ask who.

"Lawrence Newt," said Aunt Martha, calmly looking at Amy--"Lawrence Newt, who came to me as a brother comes to a sister, and said, 'Be of good cheer!' Amy, what is the matter with you and Lawrence Newt?"

"How, aunty?"

"How many months since you met here?"

"It was several months ago, aunty."

Aunt Martha sat quietly sewing, and after some time said,

"He is no longer a young man."

"But, Aunt Martha, he is not old."

Still sewing, the grave woman looked at the burning cheeks of her younger companion. Amy did not speak.

The older woman continued: "When you and he went from this room months ago I supposed you would be his wife before now."

Still Amy did not speak. It was not because she was unwilling to confide entirely in Aunt Martha, but there was something she did not wish to say to herself. Yet suddenly, as if lifted upon a calm, irresistible purpose--as a leaf is lifted upon the long swell of the sea--she said, with her heart as quiet as her eyes,

"I do not think Lawrence Newt loves me."

The next moment the poor leaf is lost in the trough of the sea. The next moment Amy Waring's heart beat tumultuously; she felt as if she should fall from her seat. Her eyes were blind with hot tears. Aunt Martha did not look up--did not start or exclaim--but deliberately threaded her needle carefully, and creased her work with her thumb-nail. After a little while, during which the sea was calming itself, she said, slowly, repeating Amy's words syllable by syllable,

"You do not believe Lawrence Newt loves you?"

"No," was the low, firm whisper of reply.

"Whom do you think he loves?"

There was an instant of almost deathly stillness in that turbulent heart.

For a moment the very sea of feeling seemed to be frozen.

Then, and very slowly, a terrible doubt arose in Amy Waring's mind.

Before this conversation every perplexity had resolved itself in the consciousness that somehow it must all come right by-and-by. It had never occurred to her to ask, Does he love any one else? But she saw now at once that if he did, then the meaning of his words was plain enough; and so, of course, he did.

Who was it?