Reading her farewell letter in later days, by the light of my matured experience, I note how remarkably Dame Dermody's faith in the purity of the tie that united us, as kindred spirits, was justified by the result.

It was only when my unknown Mary was parted from Van Brandt-in other words, it was only when she was a pure spirit that she felt my influence over her as a refining influence on her life, and that the apparition of her communicated with me in the visible and perfect likeness of herself. On my side, when was it that I dreamed of her (as in Scotland), or felt the mysterious warning of her presence in my waking moments (as in Shetland)?

Always at the

time when my heart opened most tenderly towards her and towards others when my mind was most free from the bitter doubts, the self-seeking aspirations, which degrade the divinity within us. Then, and then only,

my sympathy with her was the perfect sympathy which holds its fidelity unassailable by the chances and changes, the delusions and temptations of mortal life.

CHAPTER XIII.

MISS DUNROSS.

ABSORBED in watching over the closing days of my mother's life, I found in devoting myself to this sacred duty my only consolation under the overthrow of my last hope of marriage with Mrs. Van Brandt.

By degrees, my mother felt the reviving influences of a quiet life and a soft air. The improvement in her health could, as I but too well knew, be only an improvement for a time. Still, it was a relief to see her free from pain, and innocently happy in the presence of her son. Excepting those hours

of the day and night which were dedicated

to repose,

I

was never away from her. To

this day, I remember with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-enfolding shadows of death are closing round me.

In the hours when I was alone, my thoughts-occupying themselves mostly among the persons and events of the pastwandered back many and many a time to Shetland and Miss Dunross.

My haunting doubt as to what the black veil had really hidden from me, was no longer accompanied by a feeling of horror when it now recurred to my mind. The more vividly my later remembrances of Miss

Dunross were associated with the idea of an unutterable bodily affliction, the higher the noble nature of the woman seemed to rise. in my esteem.

For the first time since I had left Shetland, the temptation now came to me to disregard the injunction which her father had laid on me at parting. When I thought again of the stolen kiss, in the dead of night; when I recalled the appearance of the frail white hand, waving to me through the dark curtains its last farewell-and when there mingled with these memories the later remembrance of what my mother had suspected, and of what Mrs. Van Brandt had seen in her dream—the longing in me to find a means of assuring Miss Dunross that she still had her place apart in my memory and my heart, was more than mortal fortitude. could resist. I was pledged in honour not to return to Shetland, and not to write.