calmer days, and shed my bitter tears. His manner forbade it. Reckless, careless, in perpetual excitement, I could scarce recognise the Hubert who had sought and gained my love so few years ago; still less could I recognise the gloomy, remorse-stricken man whom I had watched during these long winter months.

It was on my little Violet's innocent face that my tears fell when tears would flow. It was when clasping Lionel in my arms that I yielded to occasional bursts of grief, which made him gaze on me with wonder, till, winding his little arms round my neck, he would mingle his tears with mine, in childish sympathy with a sorrow that was a mystery to him.

Maud Courtenaye returned to the Priory, and resumed her visits to Earlscourt. I could bear her presence in the whirl of my life at that time, although I had shrunk from the very thought of it when I was more exclusively given up to my misery, and when that misery was

new.

I knew afterwards that Maud marked the change which that year had wrought on me. I knew after wards that she ascribed my fitful spirits, my changeable moods, to the estrangement which she, who knew us both well, could not but observe between Hubert and myself. I knew this afterwards, but at that time there could be no confidence between Maud and me; and I sometimes marvelled how she submitted patiently to the apparent caprice which at times made me cold and indifferent to her, whilst at other times I sought her society eagerly. Maud thought me miserable. She loved me through all, and she thought that the time might come when the way should be made plain to her, in which balm might be poured into my wound. I knew this long years afterwards.

It was during that summer that

Arthur Vivian asked Maud to be his wife. They were both staying at Earlscourt at the time. Maud did not tell me what had passed, but Mr. Vivian told Hubert of his disappointment. He left Earlscourt abruptly on that same day. Maud drove alone with me that afternoon, and I spoke to her on the subject.

"You have refused Mr. Vivian, Maud ?"

She coloured slightly. I think she had not expected that Mr. Vivian would betray his own secret. She assuredly would never have done so.

"You know, Ellinor, that I shall never marry. You cannot be surprised to hear that I have refused Mr. Vivian."

"Sometimes, dear Maud, when I have remembered our conversation on that evening at the Priory, I have thought that your resolution might be yet one day broken. You made it when your heart was free; but if you were to love, Maud-if you were to love as Arthur Vivian loves you- I hardly think that your resolution would be kept."

66

'Nothing can change the circumstances which caused me to make that resolution," said Maud gravely. "I shall never break it."

I looked at her as she spoke. I thought how calm her feelings were. It seemed to me that she could never know what it is to love.

"Maud, you are cold. I envy you your coldness. It will save you from much suffering in life.”

She turned her mournful eyes upon me. I did not quite understand her expression. She seemed to look at me rather reproachfully for a moment, but she only said gently :

"Do not speak of this again, Ellinor. Let us forget it altogether."

My thoughts had returned, with all the selfishness of misery, to my own feelings.

"You are right, Maud," I said, "to keep your freedom-freedom of thought-freedom of action. You

will be happier and better than if you married. You have only your own sorrows now, only your own secrets; and your sorrows are light, your secrets are innocent."

Maud had never answered me when I spoke in this way to her. She would not seem to intrude upon sorrows that were not confided to her. She only answered me now by saying in a low voice,

"I need not tell you, Ellinor, that no state of life is free from trial and sorrow."

"No; you need not tell me soI should not believe it. What trial or sorrow had I at Ilcombe, Maud? My life was placid as a sleeping lake-bright as the sunshine which plays on its waters. And even if you are right, Maud, even if every state of life has some trial, some sorrow, I still say that you are happier alone. You can only suffer for yourself now. If clouds darken around you, you can fold your hands, and bow your head, and resign yourself to whatever comes. But I-I must watch clouds darkening, and look in terror from one loved face to another, uncertain where the stroke may fall, but feeling that

wherever it falls, there is suffering for me. It is a miserable world, Maud, and the fewer ties one has in it, the better chance of happiness whilst it lasts."

"These are not natural feelings for a wife and mother, Ellinor," said Maud, and she spoke very earnestly. "I will not ask you to tell me what has embittered your feelings so painfully. I will only ask you to remember how differently you viewed life last year. You could look on your husband and child then without this vague dread of evil which seems to torture you now. There is a cloud just now, dear Ellinor. I do not wish to know what it is; but if you seek light in the right way, light will come and disperse the darkest cloud."

THE following winter Hubert spent on the Continent. He had at first proposed my accompanying him; but I thought that our children were too young to be exposed to the discomforts of travelling, especially as Violet was a delicate child, requiring constant care and sometimes anxious watching.

Hubert went alone. I saw that it would be impossible for him now to live quietly at Earlscourt. His craving for excitement seemed to increase. I believed now that it was absolutely necessary to him. I did not attempt to detain him'; but very bitter were my feelings when the day of his departure

XVII.

arrived, and after watching his carriage drive away, I recalled his hasty embrace, his evident anxiety to be gone, the total absence of any of the tender parting words that make partings bearable between those whose hearts are bound together as ours had once been. He had left me without emotion, he had left me without expressing a single wish or anxiety with regard to my own mode of life in the solitude to which he was thus leaving me. I thought of the morning of our first parting, when soon after our marriage he had left me for a few days only. I recalled that parting, his fond

words and anxious care for me, his injunction to write daily, the last tender embrace. The contrast was very bitter, the change very terrible. No longer were Hubert's pleasures to be found at my side. His love, once so warm, was extinguished. It seemed hard, it seemed unjust. I felt that his action had darkened my life-that through him I was condemned to undying remorse; and I knew that I could have borne my lot better if his love were still mine, if he had not thrust me out from his heart and feelings to isolation in the desert of my own. It was true that at first solitude had seemed even to me more endurable than companionship; but soon, very soon, I had shrunk affrighted from that solitude, and would fain have clung more closely than ever to my husband to my companion in guilt. He had tacitly repulsed me. He had heaped sorrow on sorrow for

me.

Where could I turn?

I did not indulge long in such feelings. I remember starting as I found myself reproaching Hubert. I would not reproach him even in the innermost recesses of my thoughts. Mine, too, was the crime-and in his indifference I but reaped a portion of the punishment which I must expect to find pursuing me through life of which I thought when I looked with trembling on my children.

I had a dream that night, the recollection of which is as vivid this day as it was when I started from my restless sleep, with its horror still upon me, in the solitude of that wintry night.

I dreamed that I stood upon the brink of a precipice. I strained my eyes vainly to gaze into the depths of the gulf which yawned below. It was deep and dark, and I heard the roar of a torrent which seemed to rush along far beyond mortal sight. I knew that it roared many thousand feet below the spot where I stood.

His

I thought that I shuddered as I gazed into that gulf. I turned to leave its margin; but I paused abruptly when I marked the scene before me. A dreary waste lay there -wild and barren it stretched farther than I could see, and a bleak wind swept over it as I gazed. The sky was dark and lowering. The scene was sunless-treeless-flowerless. Again my steps turned to the brink of the precipice. I longed to escape from that howling desert. I gazed across the chasm-it yawned widely at my feet, and I saw Hubert standing on the opposite side. I dreamed that I stretched out my arms to him, that I strove to call him; but I knew that the noise of the torrent below drowned my voice. He did not look at me. He did not gaze into that dark gulf. head was averted, and with hesitating footsteps he followed a flowery path, which turned and twisted with many windings around him. I watched him. I saw that the flowers withered as he past by them. Bright and blooming as they appeared at each new turn of that path, they ever drooped and withered as his steps drew near them. Many times the windings of the path brought him again to the brink of the gulf which lay between us, but he never looked into its depths. He ever averted his head as he came near it, and pursued the flowery path. I thought that I saw that he shrunk from the withered flowers. I thought that I saw him hasten his steps as some of the brighter blossoms shrivelled under his glance, as if he would fain hurry on to reach those which were blooming beyond. It seemed to me. at last that under many of these flowers I saw that there were venemous reptiles concealed. I saw Hubert start, and hurry on as an adder glided from beneath some dark blue violets, and then I saw him pause, and gaze on some object which I could not clearly discover at first. Could it be a grave?

I looked earnestly. I saw graves.

two

I dreamed that the darkness of night was falling on the scene. Once again I glanced shuddering at the wilderness around me—once again I strove to call on Hubert to come to me-and I seemed to know whilst I called how impassable the gulf was. I dreamed that a heavy thunderstorm rolled up as night fell. The lightning flashed, and each flash seemed to take a form, a form of living fire; and horror-stricken, terrified, I recognised in that form the semblance of the picture which had haunted me for so long-the living likeness of Francesca. I saw in each flash, as in rapid succession they illuminated the waste around me-I saw the proud glance-the threatening attitude-the large glittering eyes. Again I turned towards Hubert, again I strove for utterance; but he did not hear me. I could no longer see him, and overpowered by my dread of that fiery form, I cast myself into the dark gulf, and as I sunk into its lowest depths my gaze turned towards the sky, and the storm seemed suddenly to have passed away. The evening star came softly out, and as I gazed upon its radiance it seemed to change from a star to a human countenance, and Maud Courtenaye's mournful eyes met mine. As I stretched my arms towards her with a faint last hope that she might save me, I awoke.

A storm was raging wildly that night. The wind roared round my stately home, the rain drove in torrents against the windows. The storm might have influenced my dream. I dared not sleep again lest it should return. I rose and cast myself on my knees; but I could not pray.

From that night little Violet's cradle stood by my bed. I felt as if her baby presence must banish such dark troubled dreams. Did her baby presence ever banish my dark

waking dreams? Did my bright boy's presence banish them?

Alas! answer, you who have

known what it is to have the sanctity of your motherhood sullied by a dark secret, a secret of guilt and shame.

In the hours when I have yearned most over my children, when I have endeavoured to pray for them, when I have striven to instil holy lessons into their young minds, which should take root and flourish, and bring forth fruit in later years-in those hours have the most sudden and startling clouds fallen on my spirit ; in those hours the words have died upon my lips, and I have clasped the little ones in my arms with a measure of silent suffering which cannot be described. The touch of Lionel's arms round my neck; the touch of Violet's baby fingers as she would lovingly stroke the hand which clasped her-these were the most crushing reproaches to me-these roused my most agonising emotions. 1-their mother-I, who idolised them-I, to whom their young eyes looked so fondly, so trustingly-I, whose word and wishes were law to them-I, to whom they must look for the pleasures and joys of their young lives-what was I?-unfit in my shame to gaze calmly into their young, questioning eyes; unworthy, in my guilt, to guide and train their pure minds, unable, in my misery, to surround their childish footsteps with the daily joy which the happy mother so easily and naturally bestows on her innocent children.

Oh! how I have longed for the power of hearing and answering their childish prattle as it should be heard and answered! How I have tried to cast my misery aside for their sakes, and enter into the holy place of a young child's innocent thoughts and words! How vain the effort ever was! I have sent them from me because I felt that the shadow of my dark thoughts was falling unnaturally on their young