For an instant, a puzzling thought crossed Anna’s brain as to the circumstances which could have brought her brother every night to Lily’s side, but it passed away immediately as she rejoined,

“Then she is safe in Heaven, and there are no tears there; no broken hearts, or weary hours of watching. We’ll try to meet her some day. You did right to seek her out. You could not help her dying. She might have died had she been your wife, so, I’d try to think it happened for the best, and you’ll soon get to believing it did. That’s my experience. You are young yet, only twenty-six, and life has much in store for you. You’ll find some one to fill Lily’s place; some one whom we shall all think worthy of you, and we’ll be so happy together.”

The Doctor did not reply to this but sat as if lost in painful thought, until he heard the clock strike the hour of midnight.

“I did not think it was so late,” he exclaimed. “I must really leave you now.”

Anna would not keep him longer, and with a kiss she sent him away, herself holding the door a little ajar to see what effect the new carpet would have upon him. It did not have any at first, so much was he absorbed in thinking of Lily, but he noticed it at last, admiring its pattern and having a pleasant consciousness that every thing in his room was in keeping, from the handsome drapery which shaded the windows to the marble hearth on which a fire was blazing. He could afford to have a fire, and he sat enjoying it, thinking far different thoughts from Hugh Worthington, who, in his scantily furnished room, sat, with a curl of golden hair upon the stand beside him, and a well worn Bible in his hand. Dr. Richards had no Bible of his own; he did not read it now—had never read it much, but somehow his talk with Anna had carried him back to the time when just to please his Lily he had said with her the Lord’s Prayer, kneeling at her side with his arm around her girlish form. He had not said it since, and he never would again, he thought. It was sheer nonsense, asking not to be led into temptation, as if God delighted to lead us there. It was just fit for weak women to believe, though now that Lily was dead and gone he was glad that she had believed it, and he felt that she was better off for having said those prayers and acted up to what she said. “Poor Lily,” he kept repeating to himself, while in his dreams that night there were visions of a lonely grave in a secluded part of Greenwood, and he heard again the startling words,

“Dead, both she and the child.”

He did not know there was a child, and he staggered in his sleep, just as he staggered down the creaking stairs, repeating to himself,

“Lily’s child—Lily’s child! May Lily’s God forgive me!”

CHAPTER VI.
ALICE JOHNSON.

The Sunday anticipated by Dr. Richards as the one which was to bless him with a sight of Snowdon’s belle, dawned at last, a clear, cold, winter morning, when the air was full of frost, and the crispy snow creaked beneath the tread, and glittered like diamonds in the sunshine. The Doctor had not yet made his appearance in the village, for a hoarseness, to which he was subject, had confined him at home, and Saturday had been spent by him in rehearsing to his sisters and the servants the things he had seen abroad, and in wondering if Alice Johnson would meet his expectations. He did not believe her face would at all compare with the one which continually haunted his dreams, and over which the coffin-lid was shut weary months ago, but $50,000 had invested Miss Alice with that peculiar charm which will sometimes make an ugly face beautiful. The Doctor was beginning to feel the need of funds, and now that Lily was dead, the thought had more than once crossed his mind that to set himself to the task of finding a wealthy wife was a duty he owed himself and his family. Had poor, deserted Lily lived, he could not tell what he might have done, for the memory of her love was the one restraining influence which kept him from much sin. He never could forget her; never love another as he had once loved her, but she was dead and he was free to do his mother’s will. Similar to these were the Doctor’s cogitations, as, on that Sunday morning, he made his toilet for church, anticipating not a little satisfaction from the sensation he was sure to create among some of the worshippers at St. Paul’s, for he remembered that the Terrace Hill gentry had always been people of much importance to a certain class of Snowdonites.