You see I had not dared hope you would come back to me.

I had expected to go to you." "I and you--you and I." The girl repeated the words after her, slowly, as if trying to grasp their full meaning as she uttered them.

Then a sudden terror leaped into her eyes, and she cried shudderingly: "Oh, how strange it is!" "You do not doubt it?
You do not doubt it still ?" exclaimed Miss Ludington, in anguished tones.
"No, no!" said the girl, recovering herself with an evident effort.

"I cannot doubt it.

I do not," and she threw her aims about Miss Ludington's neck in an embrace in which, nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still mingled with the impulse of tenderness which had overcome it.
When presently Miss Ludington and Ida went upstairs together, the latter, with eager, unhesitating step, led the way through a complexity of roundabout passages, and past many other doors, to that of the chamber which had been the common possession of the girl and the woman.