sun-track on the lawn; in the distance the tinkling bells of the flock,
the plaining low of some wandering heifer, while breaking the silence,
seemed still to blend with the repose. All images around lent themselves
to complete that picture of stately calm which is the character of those
old mansion-houses, which owner after owner has loved and heeded, leaving
to them the graces of antiquity, guarding them from the desolation of
decay.

Alone sat Lucretia under the cedar-trees, and her heart made dismal
contrast to the noble tranquillity that breathed around. From whatever
softening or repentant emotions which the scene of her youth might first
have awakened; from whatever of less unholy anguish which memory might
have caused when she first, once more, sat under those remembered boughs,
and, as a voice from a former world, some faint whisper of youthful love
sighed across the waste and ashes of her devastated soul,--from all such
rekindled humanities in the past she had now, with gloomy power, wrenched
herself away. Crime such as hers admits not long the sentiment that
softens remorse of gentler error. If there wakes one moment from the
past the warning and melancholy ghost, soon from that abyss rises the
Fury with the lifted scourge, and hunts on the frantic footsteps towards
the future. In the future, the haggard intellect of crime must live,
must involve itself mechanically in webs and meshes, and lose past and
present in the welcome atmosphere of darkness.

Thus while Lucretia sat, and her eyes rested upon the halls of her youth,
her mind overleaped the gulf that yet yawned between her and the object
on which she was bent. Already, in fancy, that home was hers again, its
present possessor swept away, the interloping race of Vernon ending in
one of those abrupt lines familiar to genealogists, which branch out
busily from the main tree, as if all pith and sap were monopolized by