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Rh the Puritans would lose the last vestige of their inherited consciences and bask in the sun like happy animals. But though the sky was violet, the bright sunlight was cold.

Maggie walked briskly along, by the water park, out by the great houses in Longwood, to the light bridge which swept over the river to Cambridge. There were but few people walking on the embankment this cold day; a stream of carriages bright with glistening harness rolled by. A barge, filled with a merry party, and drawn by four horses, aroused Maggie from her thoughts, which had been of Geoffrey. She had not seen him since the evening of the King's drawing-room, when he had broken his sword before the monarch, and had returned his empty title to the dry fountain of honor. Her suspicions of him had died away long before she had received his letter by Reynolds's hand. She had heard of the meute with an aching heart, and from her distant home in America she had watched the proceedings of the trial eagerly. Her life had died away within her when she read of the sentence of the prisoners, and knew that the man she loved was shut up from the world for fifteen years, like a common felon. And he owed his liberty to her, and yet he did not know it. He should have known it, by instinct, she thought. She had fancied that she knew the moment when he had made good his escape. Of a sudden, one day, during her father's absence in the yacht, the load from her soul had rolled away. She felt that he was free, and speeding over the sea to meet her. Now that he was arrived in America, she had seen him but once, and he had not spoken to her; he had bowed, with a stern, set face, and left the apartment. Had her cruel words there on the cliff by Ripon village cut away his love for her? Then the mes-