mountain of red-hot embers. Several young ladies shuddered audibly,
as well as visibly, and were reassured by a whispered word, or the
slightest conceivable movement of their gallants' chairs nearer
their own.

"I think we have the grandest storms at Ridgeley that visit our
continent," resumed Mabel thoughtfully. "I suppose because the house
stands so high. The wind never sounds to me anywhere else as it does
here on winter nights."

Yielding to the weird attraction of the scene invoked by her fancy,
she arose and walked to the window at the eastern extremity of the
hall, pulling aside the curtain that she might peer into the wild
darkness. The crimson light of the burning logs and the lamp rays
threw a strongly defined shadow of her figure upon the piazza floor,
distinct as that projected by a solar microscope upon a sheeted
wall; sent long, searching rays into the misty fall of the snow,
past the spot from which she had her last glimpse of Frederic
Chilton, so many, many months agone, showing the black outline of
the gate where he had looked back to lift his hat to her.

What was there in the wintry night and thick tempest to recall the
warmth and odor of that moist September morning, the smell of the
dripping roses overhead, the balmy humidity of every breath she
drew? What in her present companion that reminded her of the loving
clasp that had thrilled her heart into palpitation? the earnest
depth of the eyes that held hers during the one sharp, yet sweet
moment of parting--eyes that pledged the fealty of her lover's soul,
and demanded hers then and forever? His conscience might have been
sullied by crimes more heinous than those charged upon him by her