"Where have you been?" exclaimed Addie, as Lottie came down dressed warmly, but plainly. "We are all through lunch, and ready to start."

"I will not detain you, but will wrap up some lunch and take it with me. May I sit with you?" she said to Hemstead, a little later, as she came out where he was standing on the piazza,

"You will be very much exposed to the cold on the driver's seat, Miss Marsden," he said, hesitatingly; but she saw well enough what he wished, though conscience was condemning him all the time.

"So will you," she answered.

"Yes, but I am a man."

"And I am a woman," she said, with something of her old piquant style. "I do not like your implied assertion of superiority, sir. I have as good a right to expose myself to the cold as a man."

"I was not disputing your right, Miss Marsden, but—"

"O, I understand. You are of those who think so poorly of women as to regard them merely as men's pets,—the weaker sex, you would call us,—who prefer to wait till everything is made nice and comfortable, and then languidly step forward. In your reading of history, I think you must have skipped several chapters."

"You do me injustice," said Hemstead, warmly, and falling blindly into her trap. "If I had skipped all the chapters which treat of woman's heroism, in doing and suffering, I should, indeed, know little of history. She has proved herself the equal, and at times the superior of man."

"Pardon me," said Lottie, in a hurt and injured tone; "I shall reach the unwelcome truth at last: it is not woman in general who is weak, but Lottie Marsden in particular. I am very sorry that you have so poor an opinion of me, and I shall try to change it somewhat by enduring, on this drive, all the exposure and cold that you can."

As the sleigh just then came up, she settled the question by springing in and taking her place on the driver's seat.

Hemstead was perfectly nonplussed, and Mr. Dimmerly, who had stood in the door and heard what had been said, retreated rapidly, as he broke out into the most irrepressible chuckle in which he had yet indulged.

"Now, Miss Lottie," whined De Forrest, coming out muffled to his eyes, "are you going to sit there?"

"Certainly. You have Addie and Bel to talk to. Did you suppose that Mr. Hemstead was to be treated like a coachman because he kindly consented to drive us over?"

"Let me drive, then."

"No, indeed," cried Bel and Addie in chorus; "we won't trust to your driving." So De Forrest, with very poor grace, took his seat with them, and with his back to those whom he would gladly have watched most suspiciously. He had grown desperately jealous of Hemstead, and yet his vanity would not permit him to believe it possible that Lottie Marsden, of all others, could be won to such a life as the predestined missionary would lead. Like the narrow rationalists of this world, he was ever underrating the power of that kind of truth with which Hemstead was identified. To all of his class, the apparent self-sacrifice caused by love to God, and its kindred flame, love (not a passion) for some human object, has ever appeared both stupid and irrational. He did not understand Lottie, and could only curse the wretched visit, and wish it over every moment. When she returned to her accustomed life in New York, she would, he believed, soon be her old self.

Since he could not watch Lottie and Hemstead, he tried to use his ears as far as possible, but the noisy bells drowned their voices, so that he could catch but few words. He was somewhat comforted in the fact that at first they did not appear to have very much to say to each other.

Hemstead tried to introduce various topics remote from the thoughts that were weighing upon both their hearts, but Lottie did not sustain his effort. She maintained her hurt and injured air, until at last he could no longer endure her grieved, sad face, and said, in a low tone, "And could you imagine that I regard you, of all others, as weak and un-womanly?"

"What else could I think from your words? I admit I have given you cause to think very poorly of me indeed. Still it's anything but pleasant to be so regarded by those whose esteem we value."

"But I do not think poorly of you, at all," said Hemstead, half desperately. "How little you understand me!"

"I understand you better than you do me. You are a man. You have high aims, and have chosen a noble calling. But you have virtually said that I am only a woman, and a very ordinary one at that, not capable of emulating the lives of my heroic sisters. I must be shielded from the rough wind, while you, in your superiority, can face it as a matter of Course. And your later words intimate that so, figuratively, it will always be, in MY CASE,—weak, womanly, shrinking, and cowering, ever shielded by something or somebody. History, to be sure, records what women MAY do, but that is a very different thing from what Miss Marsden WILL do."

"You go to extremes, Miss Marsden, and infer far more than the occasion warrants," Hemstead replied, in great perplexity. "Was it unnatural that I wished you to be shielded from the cold?"

"And was it unnatural," she answered, "that since one of our party must be exposed to the cold, I should be willing to share in the exposure? But it is to your later words that I refer, and not the trifling incident that led to them. They, with your manner, revealed, perhaps, more than you intended. You once said I was 'capable of the noblest things.' I knew that was not true then, and to my lasting regret, and I proved the fact to you. But I think I have changed somewhat since that time. At least, I hope I am no longer capable of the meanest things."

"Miss Marsden," he said, impetuously, "you now give me credit for knowing you better than at that time—"

"Yes; and you have evidently revised your opinion very materially. But, as I said before, I can scarcely complain, when I remember my own action. But you will never know how bitterly I have repented of my folly. When that terrible charge was made against me last Monday—it came, when I was so happy and hopeful, like a sudden thunderbolt—I thought I should lose my reason. I felt that you had gone away believing I was utterly false and had been insincere in everything from first to last. I was like one who had fallen from a great height, and I scarcely spoke or moved for two days. I was not like some girls, who imagine they can find a remedy for their troubles in wealth and luxury and attention from others. I have had these things all my life, and know how little they are worth—how little they can do for one at such times. No one will ever know what I suffered. At first, when you thought so well of me, I deserved your harshest condemnation. But it did seem cruel, hard, when I was honestly trying to be better—when, at last, my life had become real and true—to be cast aside as a false thing, that must, of necessity, be despised. I dreaded, last night, that you were going away without giving me any chance to explain and correct my folly. I did mean that Monday to tell you the truth, and should have done so, if you had given me a chance. I should have condemned myself then, and I do now, more severely than even you could, who had such just cause for anger. But, Mr. Hemstead, I have changed. In all sincerity I say it, I wish to become a good, Christian girl, and would do so, if I only knew how. I was not deceiving you when I said last Christmas eve that I hoped I had become a Christian. I still think I have, though for two days I was in thick darkness. At any rate, I love my Saviour, and He has helped and comforted me in this greatest trial and sorrow of my life. I was ted to hope that you would forgive me, because He seemed so ready to forgive. There! I have now done what I have been most anxious to do—I have told you the truth. I have said all that I can, justly, in self-defence. If I have not raised your opinion of me very greatly, I cannot help it, for henceforth I intend to be honest, whatever happens."

Lottie had said the words she so wished to speak in a low tone, but with almost passionate earnestness, and no one could have doubted their truth a moment. The horses had been trotting briskly over the level ground at the foot of the steep mountain slope, and the noisy bells that made musical accompaniment to her words, as heard by Hemstead, disguised them from De Forrest and the others. The student received each one as if it were a pearl of great price.

But now the horses, mounting the steep ascent, had come to a walk, and the chime of the bells was not sufficient to drown his words. If he had answered as his feelings dictated, the attention of the others would have been gained in a most embarrassing way. He could only say in a very low voice, "I believe and trust you fully."

But Lottie heard and welcomed the assurance.

The light of the sun, that had been too brilliant upon the snow, was now becoming softened by an increasing haze. The air was growing milder, and the branches of bowed evergreens by the wayside suddenly lifted themselves as the hold of the fleecy burdens was loosened, and the miniature avalanches dropped away. At times they reached points from which the magnificent and broadening landscape could be seen to the best advantage, and as Hemstead stopped the horses at such places to rest, even Bel and Addie abounded in exclamations of delight. The river had become a vast, white plain, and stretched far away to the north. The scene was one that would have filled Hemstead with delight upon any other occasion, but Lottie was now well pleased to note that he gave to it hurried glances and little thought.

His face was a study, and, more clearly than he realized, betrayed the perplexity and trouble of his mind. How could he give up the lovely girl at his side, whose very imperfection and need won more upon him than any display of conscious strength and advanced spirituality? Her frankness, her humility and severe self-condemnation, appealed to every generous trait of his large, charitable nature. He now believed, as never before, that she was "capable of the noblest things," and he began to suffer from the torturing thought that his course was a mistaken one, and that he wronged her by acting upon the supposition that her old surroundings of luxury and culture were essential to her happiness. Might it not be true that, in a nature like hers, something far more profound was needed to create and sustain true serenity of heart? Had she not in effect plainly said that she had fathomed the shallow depths of luxury, wealth, and general flattering attention? Had she not unconsciously given him a severe rebuke? What right had he to assume that he was any more capable of heroic self-sacrifice than she? Only the certainty that he was sacrificing himself for her happiness enabled him to make the sacrifice at all, and now he began to think that his course might be a wretched blunder which would blight them both. The very possibility of making such a mistake was agony. To have come so near happiness, and then to miss it by as great a wrong to her as to himself, would be more than fortitude itself could endure. His uncle's words were ever present: "If Lottie loved, it would be no half-way business. He had no right to sacrifice her happiness." It was her happiness that he was thinking of, and if he could secure it best by consummating his own at the same time, it seemed to him that heaven would begin at once.

A trivial circumstance had enabled Lottie to intimate plainly to him that he had virtually asserted, "I am a man, and can do that of which only the noblest and most unselfish natures are capable. You are not only a woman, but you cannot rise to the level of many of your sisters, who have left on history's page the heroic record of their triumphs over the supposed weakness of their sex." What he had not meant, but still had appeared to hint from his language, was he not, in fact, practically acting upon as true? While he had taken his course in the spirit of the most generous self-sacrifice, might he not, at the same time, be ignoring the fact that she was as capable of self-sacrifice and noble consecration to a sacred cause as himself?

If she had been sincere in her religious experiences, and in all her words and actions in that direction, how could he help believing that she was equally sincere in the language of tone and eye, which had revealed her heart so plainly that even he, who was the last in the world to presume, had come to think that she loved him? And yet he was about to make his life, and perhaps hers also, one long regret, because he had quietly assumed that she was one of those women whose life depends on surroundings, and to whose souls mere things can minister more than love and the consciousness of an heroic devotion to a sacred cause. Lottie had skilfully and clearly given the impression she sought to convey; and this impression, uniting with the student's love, formed a combination whose assaults caused his supposed inflexible purpose to waver.

Lottie's quick intuition enabled her to see that she had led him far enough at present, while they were in such close proximity to jealous, observant eyes and attentive ears, and so, with equal tact, she led his thoughts to more tranquillizing topics. She was employing all the skill and finesse of which she had been mistress in the days of her insincerity and heartless coquetry. These gifts were still hers, as much as ever. But now they were under the control of conscience, and would henceforth be used to secure and promote happiness, not to destroy it.

And she felt that she had need of tact and skill. The situation was not so very peculiar. Many had passed through just such experiences before, but have all passed on to lives of consummated happiness? She loved the man at her side devotedly, and was perfectly aware of his love for her, and yet woman's silence was upon her lips. They were soon to separate, not to meet again for many years, if ever. She could not speak. If from any motive, even the noblest, he did not speak, how could she meet the long, lonely future, in which every day would make more clear the dreary truth that she had missed her true life and happiness?—missed it through no necessity that might in the end bring resignation, but through a mistake,—the unselfish blundering of a man who wrongly supposed she could be happier without than with him. It was her delicate task to show him, without abating one jot of woman's jealous reserve, that she was capable of all the self-sacrifice to which he looked forward, and that, as his uncle had told him, he had no right to sacrifice her happiness.

He was one of those single-hearted, resolute fellows, who have the greatest faculty for persistently blundering under an honest but wrong impression. But, in this case, his impression was natural, and he was wrong, only because Lottie was "capable of noble things,"—only because she did belong to that class of women to whom the love of their heart counts for infinitely more than all externals. If he had fallen in love with a very goodish sort of girl of the Bel Parton type, the course he had marked out would have been the wisest and best, eventually, for both, even though it involved, at first, a good deal of suffering.

When a wife assures her husband, by word or manner, "You took advantage of my love and inexperience to commit me to a life and condition that are distasteful or revolting, and you have thereby inflicted an irreparable injury," the man, if he be fine-fibred and sensitive, can only look forward to a painful and aggravated form of martyrdom. One had better live alone as long as Methuselah than induce a small-souled woman to enter with him on a life involving continual sacrifice. With such women, some men can be tolerably happy, if they have the means to carry out the "gilded cage" principle; but woe to them both if the gilded cage is broken or lost, and they have to go out into the great world and build their nest wherever they can.

Providence had given to Lottie the chance to live the life of ideal womanhood,—the life of love and devotion,—and she did not mean to lose it. While her high spirit would often chafe with a little wholesome friction, it would yet grow sweeter and more patient under the trials of the hardest lot, if they could only be endured at his side to whom, by some mystic necessity of her being, she had given her heart.

Therefore, with unmingled satisfaction she saw that she was sapping the student's stern resolution not to speak. She would, by a witchery as innocent as subtile, beguile him into just the opposite of what he had proposed. As she had declared to her uncle, he should ask her, in a very humble manner, to become a home missionary, and she, under the circumstances, was more ready to comply than to become Empress of all the Russias.

But, during the remainder of the ride, she made the time pass all too quickly, as she led him to speak of his student life, his Western home, and especially of his mother; and Lottie smiled appreciatively over the enthusiasm and affection which he manifested for one concerning whom she had ever heard Mrs. Marchmont speak a little slightingly. The genuine interest which she took in all that related to Mrs. Hemstead touched the young man very closely, and his whole nature was getting under arms against what his heart was beginning to characterize as a most unnatural and stupid resolution.

De Forrest was greatly relieved as he heard Hemstead describing his humble, farm-house home and toiling mother; for the student softened none of the hard outlines of their comparative poverty.

"The great fool!" thought the exquisite. "Even if Lottie were inclined to care for him somewhat, he has repelled her now by revealing his common and poverty-stricken surroundings."

But as Lottie became satisfied that Hemstead would not be able to go away in silence, a new cause of trouble and perplexity claimed her attention. Not that she had not thought of it often since she had realized how irrevocably she had given her love, but other and more immediate questions had occupied her mind. How was she to reconcile her fashionable mother and worldly father to her choice? She clearly recognized that what to her seemed the most natural—indeed, the only thing in life left for her—would appear to one simply monstrous, and to the other the baldest folly.

She loved her parents sincerely, for, with all her faults, she had never been cold-hearted; and, while she proposed to be resolute, it was with the deepest anxiety and regret that she foresaw the inevitable conflict.

But when she was at a loss to think of anything that could be said to soften the blow, or make her course appear right or reasonable, as they would look at it, a circumstance o............