"So saying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate."
Paradise Lost, Book IX.

With Christ's, and judge which were the heavier."

Festus.

HE Indian summer was come, and I had returned to Glen-Beck. There were cool delicious mornings; there were warm bright days; over the landscape hung a purple mist, not obscuring, but softening all things; there were sunsets of unimaginable beauty; the splendor of the season was at its height. When it faded the family were to return to Mr. Forrester's house in town.

Mildred and I were together as much as formerly. We resumed our studies, our

walks, our visits to Mrs. Grey. She was fond of me as ever, and I keenly enjoyed her companionship. We never liked to be long separated from each other. The routine of our lives seemed the same as before my illness, yet all was not quite the same. Something was different. I sought to discover what. I found it in a shade that rested on Mildred's brow, in a troubled, restless look in her large eyes, and a lack of her wonted candor with me. What might be the cause. Erelong I learned it.

One day I had sought Mildred about the house and garden in vain. I wished to find her immediately if possible, for there was an exceedingly fine light falling from a high stained window upon the halo-circled head of a saint in a picture, that hung in an upper hall. I had happened twice or thrice to see it in this light, and had described it to Mildred as very beautiful. Anxious to see it, she had watched for this effect of a certain sunlight for some days in vain. To-day it was fine, but where was Mildred? I was on my way back to the painting after a fruitless search below-stairs,

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when, in passing Mrs. Forrester's room-door, I perceived that it was ajar. I had found Mildred here frequently before, and knowing that Mrs. Forrester had gone to the city, I pushed the door open and looked in. Mildred was there, but so absorbed in reading that she did not hear my entrance, which was quite hurried enough to attract her attention. She stood before an open drawer in her mother's bureau, and her hands held one of the city journals Mrs. Forrester had always locked so carefully from sight. Her back was toward me, and I had approached near enough to read the name of the paper, which was printed in clear, large type at the top of the page. Retreating again, for now I did not wish her to discover my presence, I watched for a time the effect of roused feeling in the crimson-dyed cheek and compressed lip, as she read. Like our first mother, there she stood gaining forbidden knowledge; her own hand plucked the banned fruit. "Oh Mildred," I thought, "the sword will soon wave between the Paradise you are leaving and the barren world beyond. Heretofore, life has had few shadows;

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FORBIDDEN KNOWLedge.

who may guess the depth of the gathering gloom? The sorrow consequent on this knowledge of evil, albeit it be not of your own doing, will effectually bar your return to the happiness of past days."

After this Mildred went daily to her mother's room, after Mrs. Forrester had left it for her drive to the city. For a week she made these secret visits, until, it is probable, the journals all perused, she had no longer a motive to take her thither. I pitied her sincerely during this period. Many of the articles on the failure of the Talbot Bank were written in an exceedingly vindictive spirit, and although the truth was spoken, it was in many cases with the bitterest sarcasm. Perhaps it was necessary so to speak; but what availed it all, since the offenders were not brought to justice. I could fancy Mildred shrinking as she read the clearly-told, oftrepeated tale of fraud designed and carried to a successful issue. I could imagine the pain she endured, when the epithets coupled with her father's name met her eye. But I do not think it was possible for me to

conceive the

keenness of the anguish that entered into her soul as the certainty of the unworthiness of her father and uncle was made apparent. How she first discovered the papers, or what led to their perusal, it is impossible to say. I learned but the fact that all was clear to Mildred at last. The coldness of friends, the gloom on her father's brow, the scornful, half impatient stoicism of Walworth, which she could not but be startled at, at times, were all accounted for. She could be deceived no longer by the watchful kindness of those about her, for the source of the shadow brooding over her home was at length discovered to her. How did it affect her? At first in a shade, as I have said, a reserve between herself and me. Then, when her visits to her mother's room ended, she went daily for a time to Mrs. Grey. I rejoiced at this, for I knew that the comforting words I longed to speak would come better from Nurse Matty, whom Mildred had made her confidant from a child. I felt that I had no right to say aught to her, since she had solicited from me neither sympathy nor advice. A gradual change was appar