Chapter 10 MRS. MEREDITH HAS A CONSCIENCE.

She had one, years before, but, since the summer day when she sent from her the white-faced man whose heart she had broken, it had been hardening over with a stony crust which nothing, it seemed, could break. And yet there were times when she was softened and wished that much which she had done might be blotted out from the great book in which she believed.

There was many a misdeed recorded there against her, she knew, and occasionally there stole over her a strange disquietude as to how she could confront them when they all came up against her.

Usually, she could cast such thoughts aside by a drive down gay Broadway, or, at most, a call at Stewart's; but the sight of Anna's white face and the knowing what made it so white was a constant reproach, and conscience gradually wakened from its torpor enough to whisper of the only restitution in her power-that of confession to Arthur.

But from this she shrank nervously. She could not humble herself thus to any one, and she would not either. Then came the fear lest by another than herself her guilt should come to light. What if Thornton Hastings should find her out? She was half afraid he suspected her now, and that gave her the keenest pang of all, for she respected Thornton highly, and it would cost her much to lose his good opinion.

She had lost him for her niece, but she could not spare him from herself, and so, in sad perplexity, which wore upon her visibly, the autumn days went on until at last she sat one morning in her dressing-room and read in a foreign paper:

"Died, at Strasburgh, August 31st, Edward Coleman, aged 46."

That was all; but the paper dropped from the trembling hands, and the proud woman of the world bowed her head upon the cold marble of the table and wept aloud. She was not Mrs. Meredith now. She was Julia Ruthven again, and she stood with Edward Coleman out in the grassy orchard, where the apple-blossoms were dropping from the trees and the air was full of insects' hum and the song of matin birds. She was the wealthy Mrs. Meredith now, and he was dead in Strasburgh. True to her he had been to the last; for he had never married, and those who had met him abroad had brought back the same report of "a white-haired man, old before his time, with a tired, sad look upon his face." That look she had written there, and she wept on as she recalled the past and murmured softly:

"Poor Edward! I loved you all the while, but I sold myself for gold, and it turned your brown locks snowy-white, poor darling!" and her hands moved up and down the folds of her cashmere robe, as if it were the brown locks they were smoothing just as they used to do. Then came a thought of Anna, whose face wore much the look which Edward's did when he went slowly from the orchard and left her there alone, with the apple-blossoms dropping on her head and the wild bees' hum in her ear.

"I can at least do right in that respect," she said; "I can undo the past to some extent and lessen the load of sin rolling upon my shoulders. I will write to Arthur Leighton. I surely need tell no one else; not yet, at least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can trust to his discretion and to his honor, too. He will not betray me unless it is necessary, and then only to Anna. Edward would bid me do it if he could speak. He was somewhat like Arthur Leighton."

And so, with the dead man in Strasburgh before her eyes, Mrs. Meredith nerved herself to write to Arthur Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed upon him, imploring his forgiveness and begging him to spare her as much as possible.

"I know from Anna's own lips how much she has always loved you," she wrote in conclusion; "but she does not know of the stolen letter, and I leave you to make such use of the knowledge as you shall think proper."

She did not put in a single plea for the poor, little Lucy, dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still, with all her qualms of conscience, and thought only of Anna, whom she would make happy at another's sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and, as she finished her letter and placed it in an envelope with the one which Arthur had sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the wedding she would give her niece-a wedding not quite like that she had designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but a quiet, elegant affair, just suited to a clergyman who was marrying a Ruthven.

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