up to her the strange theory of Paul. The motive which no man or woman
could make or even modify, was the prime spring as well as ruler of the
will, cropping out, to use his own words, from moral, if not also
physical causes, laid when God said, "Let there be light, and there was
light." A deeper thinker than most of her sex, she felt "the sublimity
in terror" of this view of God's ways with man. If she could not resist
the resolution to love Walter, how could he resist the love he bore to
another? The thought shook her to the heart; nor was she less pained
when she reflected on the hapless Paul, with his long-concealed
affection, so pure from the sordidness of a desire for money, that he
would have toiled for her under the flame of the midnight lamp,
continued into the light of the rising sun.

During the night the persistency of her resolution to remain by her past
affection was maintained; yet as it was still merely a persistency
implying the continuance of a foe ready to assert the old rights, she
was so far unhappy that she wanted that composure of mind which consists
in the absence of conflict among one's own thoughts.

In the morning she found the locket lying on her parlour table, with the
inscription changed from Agnes Ainslie to Rachel Grierson. She took it
up and fixed her eyes upon it. At one time she would have given the
world for it; now it attracted her and repelled her. It came from the
only man she loved; but another name had been on it, which ought, for
aught she could be sure of, to have been on it still. It might be the
pledge of affection, but it might also be the evidence of falsehood to
her and unfaithfulness to another. And then, as she traced the lines of
her name, she thought she could discover the signs of a tremulousness in
the hand that traced them. Amidst all these thoughts and conflicting
feelings, she could not help recurring to the circumstance that he had