was receiving its gift, not of tongues, but of fire-not of healing, but of suffering. "My darling!" he half-whispered, "I shall see you to-morrow. Come! do not be so cast down-it is not reasonable, my Heart! And tears in those sweet eyes? My Leam, dry them! they are too beautiful for tears! Look up, my darling. Give me one happy little smile, and remember to-morrow-and for all our lives after !" But Leam could not smile. Her face was set to its old mask of tragedy and sorrow. Something, she knew not what, had passed out of her life and something had come into it; something that Edgar for the moment could neither restore nor yet banish. He pressed her to him for the last time, kissed her passive face again and again, caught the scent of the lemon-plant in her hair where he had placed it, and left her. As he passed through the gate the storm burst in all its fury, and Leam went up into her own room in a voiceless, tearless grief that made the whole earth a desert, and all life desolation. She did not know herself this evening, nor understand what it was that ailed her. She had only consciously loved for two days, and this was the anguish to which she had been brought. No, not even when mamma died had she suffered as she was suffering now. She felt as if she had lost him, even as she had lost her. She did not believe in to-morrow. It would never come. She would never be with him again as she had been to-day. No self-reasoning, feebly aimed at, could calm her or convince her of the folly of her fears. He had gone; she was left; and they were parted for ever. She sat by the window desolate, deserted, more alone than she had ever been before, because she had lost more than she had ever either held or lost before. The storm that was raging in the sky grew gradually stronger and came still nearer; but she scarcely noticed it. It was only as the symphony sounding in sad harmony with her unspoken wail. Flash followed flash, swifter, nearer, more vivid; the thunder crashed and roared as if it would have beaten the house to the ground and rent the very earth whereon it stood; the rain fell in torrents that broke the flowers like hail, and ran in turbulent rivulets along the paths. Never had there been such a furious tempest as this at North Aston since the days of tradition. It made the people in the village below quail and cry out that the Day of Judgment had come upon them; it made Leam at last forget her sorrow, and quail in her solitude as if her Day of Judgment too had come upon her. Then there came one awful flash that seemed to set the whole room on fire; and as Leam started up, thinking that the place was indeed in flames, her eyes fell on the Tables of the Ten Commandments given her by Madame; and there in letters of blood that seemed to cry out against her like a voice, she saw by the light of that accusing flash those words of terrible significance to her: THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER. THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE. MAY, 1876. The Atonement of Leam Dundas. BOOK II. CHAPTER XVII. UNWORTHY. HE storm had passed with the night, and the day was bright and joyful; almost hard in its brightness and cruel in its joy; for while the sun was shining overhead and the air was musical with the hum of insects and the song of birds, the flowers were broken, the tender plants destroyed, the uncut corn was laid as if a troop of horse had trampled down the crops, and the woods, like the gardens and the fields, were wrecked and spoiled. But of all the mourners sighing between earth and sky nature is the one that never repents; and the sun shines out over the saddest ruin as it shines out over the richest growth, as careless of the one as of the other. Edgar came down from the Hill in the sunshine, handsome, strong VOL. XXXIII.-NO. 197. jocund as the day. As he rode through the famous double avenue of chestnuts he thought, what a glorious day!—how clear and full of life after the storm!—but he noted the wreckage too, and was concerned to see how the trees and fields had suffered. Still, the one would put forth new branches and fresh leaves next year; and if the other had been roughly handled there was yet a salvage to be garnered. The ruin was not irreparable, and he was in the mood to make the best of things. Do not the first days of a happy love ever give the happiest kind of philosophy for man and woman to go on? And he was happy in his love. Who more so? He was on his way now to Ford House as a man going to his own, serene and confident of his possession. He had left his treasure overnight, and he went to take it up again, sure to find it where he had laid it down. He had no thought of the thief who might have stolen it in the dark hours, of the rust that might have cankered it in the chill of the grey morning. He only pictured to himself its beauty, its sweetness, and undimmed radiance ; only remembered that this treasure was his, his own and his only, unshared by any, and known in its excellence by none before him. He rode up to the door glad, dominant, assured. Life was very pleasant to the strong man and ardent lover-the English gentleman with his happiness in his own keeping, and his future marked out in a clear broad pathway before him. There was no cloud in his sky, no shadow on his sea; it was all sunshine and serenity; man the master of his own fate and the ruler of circumstance-man the supreme over all things, a woman's past included. Not seeing Leam in the garden, Edgar rang the bell, and was shown into the drawing-room where she was sitting alone. The down-drawn blinds had darkened the room to a pleasant twilight for eyes somewhat overpowered by the blazing sunshine and the dazzling white clouds flung like heaps of snow against the hard bright blue of the sky; yet something struck more chill than restful on the lover as he came through the doorway, little fanciful or sentimental as he was. Leam, who had not been in bed through the night, was sitting on the sofa, in the remotest and darkest part of the room. She rose as he entered; rose only; not coming forward to meet him, but standing in her place silent, pale, yet calm and collected. She did not look at him, but neither did she blush nor tremble. There was something statuesque, almost dead about her; something that was not the same Leam whom he had known from the first. He went up to her, both hands held out. She shrank back and folded hers in each other, still not looking at him. "Why, Leam, what is it!" he cried in amazement, pained, shocked at her action. Was she in her right mind? Had she heard of his former attentions to Adelaide, divined their ultimate meaning, and been seized with a mad idea of sacrifice and generosity? It must be with Adelaide, he thought, rapidly reviewing his past. He was absolutely |