widow in her arms. "Oh, my poor Ina! my darling Ina! I have come back again. I am quite safe. I have come back to be with you in your trouble."
"I knew that you were not dead," Ina said, in an odd dulled voice. "I knew that God would not be so cruel as to take you from me. I knew that you would have come to me if you had been dead. Horace has come to me often. We have talked together. He has told me—we have forgiven each other every thing."
"Oh!" my dearest Ina, he had nothing to forgive you."
"You don't know. Oh! wasn't it sad about poor Horace?" Ina went on quite calmly. "Mr. Blake has told you, I suppose, Elsie, all that has happened."
"Yes, I know all that happened. My heart ached for you, Ina."
"But it was much best that God should have taken him," Ina went on. "Horace feels that now. It was such a bright, joyous life, Elsie—that's what makes it seem so hard, and he cared so for the things of life—poor Horace! But God will remember all that, and we don't know what the other life is like, dear. I think it must be like this one, only without the sin. Horace was taken away just in time to save him from sin. I told her that. I told her I was glad; and I think she understood. Poor woman, I was sorry for her. It was harder for her than for me."
Elsie listened in silent wonder. It seemed a relief to Ina to go on.
"Yes, it was much best so. It wasn't her fault, and it wasn't his. If I had loved him he might have cared for me. That was the wrong, from the beginning. He had a loving nature, poor Horace. People cannot help caring for one person more than for another, Elsie. They ought not to be judged hardly. The sin is in marrying one person when you love another. You may think you will get over it, but you never do, you never do. It is always a canker in the heart."
And now Elsie knew what Ina had done for her. She
