GRADUALLY the mind of Irene attained clearness of perception as to duty, and a firmness of will that led her to act in obedience to what reason and religion taught her was right. The leading idea which Mrs. Everet endeavored to keep before her was this: that no happiness is possible, except in some work that removes self-consciousness and fills our minds with an interest in the well-being of others. While Rose was at Ivy Cliff, Irene acted with her, and was sustained by her love and companionship. After her marriage and removal to New York, Irene was left to stand alone, and this tried her strength. It was feeble. The sickness and death of her father drew her back again into herself, and for a time extinguished all interest in what was on the outside. To awaken a new and higher life was the aim of her friend, and she never wearied in her generous efforts. During this winter plans were matured for active usefulness in the old spheres, and Mrs. Everet promised to pass as much time in the next summer with her father as possible, so as to act with Irene in the development of these schemes.

The first warm days of summer found Irene back again in her home at Ivy Cliff. Her visit in New York had been prolonged far beyond the limit assigned to it in the beginning, but Rose would not consent to an earlier return. This winter of daily life with Mrs. Everet, in the unreserved intercourse of home, was of great use to Irene. Affliction had mellowed all the harder portions of her disposition, which the trouble and experiences of the past few years could not reach with their softening influences. There was good soil in her mind, well prepared, and the sower failed not in the work of scattering good seed upon it with a liberal hand—seed that felt soon a quickening life and swelled in the delight of coming germination.

It is not our purpose to record the history of Irene during the years of her discipline at Ivy Cliff, where she lived, nun-like, for the larger part of her time. She had useful work there, and in its faithful performance peace came to her troubled soul. Three or four times every year she paid a visit to Rose, and spent on each occasion from one to three or four weeks. It could not but happen that in these visits congenial friendship would be made, and tender remembrances go back with her into the seclusion of her country home, to remain as sweet companions in her hours of loneliness.

It was something remarkable that, during the six or seven years which followed Irene\'s separation from her husband, she had never seen him. He was still a resident of New York, and well known as a rapidly advancing member of the bar. Occasionally his name met her eyes in the newspapers, as connected with some important suit; but, beyond this, his life was to her a dead letter. He might be married again, for all she knew to the contrary. But she never dwelt on that thought; its intrusion always disturbed her, and that profoundly.

And how was it with Hartley Emerson? Had he again tried the experiment which once so signally failed? No; he had not ventured upon the sea whose depths held the richest vessel he had freighted in life. Visions of loveliness had floated before him, and he had been lured by them, a few times, out of his beaten path. But he carried in his memory a picture that, when his eyes turned inward, held their gaze so fixedly that all other images grew dim or unlovely. And so, with a sigh, he would turn again to the old way and move on as before.

But the past was irrevocable. "And shall I," he began to say to himself, "for this one great error of my youth—this blind mistake—pass a desolate and fruitless life?"

Oftener and oftener the question was repeated in his thoughts, until it found answer in an emphatic No! Then he looked around with a new interest, and went more into society. Soon one fair face came more frequently before the eyes of his mind than any other face. He saw it as he sat in his law-office, saw it on the page of his book as he read in the evening, lying over the printed words and hiding from his thoughts their meaning; saw it in dreams. The face haunted him. How long was this since that fatal night of discord and separation? Ten years. So long? Yes, so long. Ten weary years had made their record upon his book of life and upon hers. Ten weary years! The discipline of this time had not worked on either any moral deterioration. Both were yet sound to the core, and both were building up characters based on the broad foundations of virtue.

Steadily that face grew into a more living distinctness, haunting his daily thoughts and nightly visions. Then new life-pulses began to throb in his heart; new emotions to tremble over its long calm surface; new warmth to flow, spring-like, into the indurated soil. This face, which had begun thus to dwell with him, was the face of a maiden, beautiful to look upon. He had met her often during a year, and from the beginning of their acquaintance she had interested him. If he erred not, the interest was mutual. From all points of view he now commenced studying her character. Having made one mistake, he was fearful and guarded. Better go on a lonely man to the end of life than again have his love-freighted bark buried in mid-ocean.

At last, Emerson was satisfied. He had found the sweet being whose life could blend in eternal oneness with his own; and it only remained for him to say to her in words what she had read as plainly as written language in his eyes. So far as she was concerned, no impediment existed. We will not say that she was ripe enough in soul to wed with this man, who had passed through experiences of a kind that always develop the character broadly and deeply. No, for such was not the case. She was too young and inexperienced to understand him; too narrow in her range of thought; too much a child. But something in her beautiful, innocent, sweet young face had won his heart; and in the weakness of passion, not in the manly strength of a deep love, he had bowed down to a shrine at which he could never worship and be satisfied.

But even strong men are weak in woman\'s toils, and Hartley Emerson was a captive.

There was to be a pleasure-party on one of the steamers that cut the bright waters of the fair Hudson, and Emerson and the maiden, whose face was now his daily companion, were to be of the number. He felt that the time had come for him to speak if he meant to speak at all—to say what was in his thought, or turn aside and let another woo and win the lovely being imagination had already pictured as the sweet companion of his future home. The night that preceded this excursion was a sleepless one for Hartley Emerson. Questions and doubts, scarcely defined in his thoughts before, pressed themselves upon him and demanded a solution. The past came up with a vividness not experienced for years. In states of semi-consciousness—half-sleeping, half-waking—there returned to him such life-like realizations of events long ago recorded in his memory, and covered over with the dust of time, that he started from them to full wakefulness, with a heart throbbing in wild tumult. Once there was presented so vivid a picture of Irene that for some moments he was unable to satisfy himself that all............