in the world, and he might have cared for not bear it. She had to learn that in her me again in time, if this had not been. endurance neither her power nor her will Some woman among those great people was concerned; she had to learn that no who have made much of him has done human creature is so utterly helpless as a this. He has never told me, but I guessed woman whose husband is her foe. it all; I knew the reason there must be for his disgust with our home; for what did he ever know of wealth and luxury more than I have known? Some woman-rich and beautiful, and perhaps she has everything the world can give her and she has taken him from me. What have I now- what have I now? O my God, my God! O mother, mother!'

Alice sank upon her knees by her bed in pitiable agony. It was after that first paroxysm of her new phase of suffering that little Maggie noticed her tear-stained face, and was confirmed in her impression that 'the lady's' husband frightened her.

It was late in the evening before Henry Hurst broke the moody silence which be had maintained since he returned from his walk. He and Alice had dined together, but had hardly interchanged a word during their meal. Henry Hurst had not wavered. in his purpose, but he found more difficulty than he had anticipated in putting it into execution. He observed Alice closely, and was struck by something unusual in her appearance and manner. She looked handsomer, he thought, and older than her wont; there was more gravity and less timidity about her. She was not embarrassed, but calm and steady, and there was Against the unbearable suffering of the an unusual brightness in her eyes, and conviction which the observation of every something which he would have laughed at day confirmed, and which she was not slow himself for calling dignity, but which was to strengthen by putting what was, in fact, dignity nevertheless, in her tone and gesits correct interpretation upon the silence ture. His whole heart, his whole mind, Henry Hurst observed respecting his oc- was fixed on Madeleine Burdett; he had cupations in the autumn, Alice rebelled. resolved to pursue the project which gave Neglect, coldness, hardly-disguised aver-him the wicked hope of winning her, to the sion, she had borne as well as she could; but this she could not bear, so she told herself. She must tell him that she knew, that she was certain, that he had been enticed away from her, and that she could not endure it. This stronger emotion almost drove away her fear of him. If this woman, whoever she might be, could know the misery she was inflicting on another woman, already sufficiently wretched without that, she would be merciful to her, and refuse to see him any more. Thus poor Alice, in the gentler moods of her pain, thought; but in the angrier moods she raged against the unknown rival with all the intense and if there be any power of making it so- - the dangerous anger of a meek and patient nature driven out of its habitual bounds by fierce, remorseless pain.

Alice resolved that her husband should not leave her without some explanation of his future intentions — without a protest on her part against their alienation-without one more strong appeal, founded on her utter solitude and dependence. Poor Alice! she little knew that that solitude, that dependence, were as forcibly present to his mind as to hers, were presenting themselves to him, as to her, in the light of powerful motives, irresistible weapons. She had said in the fierce revolt of her heart against the bitterness and injustice of her fate, that she could not, she would

end; and yet he watched his wife that evening with a sentiment approaching admiration, and surprised himself more than once with the passing thought,

If she had looked and moved and spoken like that always, I don't think I should have been so confoundedly tired of her so soon.'

Alice was sitting by her work-table, dressing a doll for little Maggie in the trim costume of a French bonne. The doll was to represent Honorine, well known to Maggie by reputation, and who had figured in many of Alice's simple inventions. Alice was perfectly conscious that her husband intended to say something unpleasant to her, and quite resolved that she would speak to him in the sense she had determined upon, but she meant him to speak first; so she took up her work and tried to go on with it unconcernedly. Henry Hurst looked at her darkly for a little while, and then rose and leaned against the chimneypiece.

Put that work down, Alice,' he said; 'I want to talk to you.'

She obeyed, then folded her hands, and prepared to listen to him, her heart beating heavily, and the colour fading out of her face.

'Don't look so scared,' he went on; 'I am not going to say anything to frighten you. One would think I was an ogre, when you put on that terrified look.'

I am not afraid of you, or of what you

are going to say,' replied Alice with surpris- and what I am tired of I don't mean to uning firmness, and looking at him steadily; dergo. Do you understand that?' I have been expecting, hoping, for some days that you would break this unnatural silence between us.'

You would have left me, deserted me com- | know what my prospects are, and tell you pletely? O Henry, don't say that-I-I what I can do for you. If you like to set mean, unsay it. You don't mean it-you up a school-you had a great fancy for

cannot.'

She rose and hurried towards him, her hands outstretched; but he put her aside with his arm, and she shrank back.

'Be quiet, and listen to me,' he said roughly. I wish to speak to you reasonably and a's gently as may be; if you won't be reasonable, I shall have to tell you my meaning in very few and very plain words. There is no use in the prolongation of this kind of thing. Will you sit still and listen to me, or will you not?'

She resumed her seat, and said in an unnaturally quiet tone, I am listening.'

doing so, I remember, in Paris-I daresay I could manage that; I shall get the money somehow. As for me, when my present work is done, I shall leave England, and when I may return is utterly unknown to me; never, most likely. Rely on it, it is better for you; but whether you think it is better or worse, you cannot influence my decision, though you may give me trouble, and make me curse my marriage more heartily than I have cursed it yet.'

He paused here, and glanced at her. In spite of the cold and studied deliberation of his tone he was agitated, and he feared her reply. But she made none; she sat quite still, her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed, but tearless. He was about to speak again, when she sighed deeply, her hands unclasped themselves, and she fell heavily to the ground.

Very well. You must be as ready as I am to acknowledge that our marriage was a great mistake. You don't suit me, I don't suit you; that may be more your fault than mine, or more my fault than yours; I don't enter into that matter, but the fact is indisputable. Time cannot alter this, except to make it worse; and the best thing you and Henry Hurst called to the servant, but in I can do is to enter into an amicable agree- vain. She had gone to see how little Magment to separate. I will provide for you as gie fared, and there was nobody in the well as I can; but I must have-I am de- house but him and Alice. The next motermined to have- my freedom.' ment he remembered that it was fortunate Before he paused in his speech, the in- no one could see her as she was, no one credulous terror with which Alice had re- could gossip about this fainting-fit, and garded him, gave place to the first ex-speculate on its cause. He lifted Alice's pression of scorn he had ever seen in her

face.

Your freedom?' she said slowly. In what has it been infringed? You are free to leave me, free to return to me, free to keep me in the most painful and humiliating ignorance of everything concerning you, free to inflict such agony on me, as I can rejoice. thank God!-to know it is not in the power of any human being to inflict on you.'

You had better discontinue your heroics,' said Henry Hurst, with a sneer, if you want me to speak another word to you. When I have done, you may invoke any amount of pardon or punishment on my head that pleases you. The fact is mind, it is your own fault that you have it told you in such plain words—I am tired of you, tired of the burden of an unsuitable marriage, determined to pursue my art, and to make something of my life; better late than never. If I succeed, you will be better off- that much I promise you; but I will not live with you. I am determined to separate from you, and from that resolution nothing can move me. Hush, don't speak until I have done. I shall write to you from London, when I

light form from the ground, and carried it up the narrow stair with ease. Then he laid her, still as senseless as a stone, upon her bed, returned to the sitting-room for a light, and went upstairs again. When the lamp showed him her still, white face, he thought how like death it looked, and he bent down and scanned it carefully before he made any attempt to revive her. Yes, it looked strangely like death; there were the hollow temples and the sunken eyeballs, the fixed muscles, the awful gray tinge, the tightened lips, the blue shade over the teeth. How he wished that she were really dead! Even while he took the ordinary means to recall her to life, he ardently desired to be rid of her in the only sure, effectual way. Even as he set the door and windows open, letting the wintry wind blow over her- - the solemn though feeble starlight came into the room with the current of air, making the deathlike face more deathlike he had in his fancy the vision of the innocent, beautiful, bright girl whom his guilty love profaned.

After a while Alice's lips moved, and she slightly lifted one hand. Then she began to recover consciousness. When he knew that she could see and hear him,

6

Henry Hurst, who had heard the servant return to the house, said, Keep quiet; I will send Jane to you;' and left her.

Alice lay still and silent until her servant came and helped her to get her clothes off, and lie down in her bed. She lay still and silent all through the night, sometimes with closed eyes, but oftener looking through the window at the stars. At first she had not much consciousness of suffering, but at dawn she fell into a paroxysm of agony, which in its turn gave way to the slumber of extreme exhaustion.

It was noon when she awoke and sat up in bewilderment, like one awaking from a terrible dream. On the table beside her lay a note. It was from her husband.

It was better not to disturb you,' he wrote. I shall call on the doctor at Carbury, and send him to you. I shall see you in a few weeks.'

It was not all over, then, Alice thought, when the confusion of her brain cleared a little; he had not left her for ever. The scene of the night before was as true, as terrible as ever: but she had a little time in which to prevent, to parry-at the worst, to realise her fate. Overwhelming bodily weakness mercifully held her passive. The Carbury doctor came, and recommended perfect quiet and steel drops. All that day and the next Alice lay in her bed still and silent, only in the night when the stars were shining she sometimes murmured half aloud, 'Mother, mother!'

CHAPTER IV.

DURING THE WINTER.

addressed to him made that plain. He could not help dwelling a little on this; but he soon dismissed all consideration of Alice and her sentiments, and gave himself up to the hopes and schemes which possessed him.

His first business in London was to provide himself with lodgings in a good' neighbourhood, and there to establish himself in a manner which should not contrast too strongly with the position of Madeleine Burdett. His hope, his object, was to gain the girl's affections so completely, to obtain such an ascendency over her, as would induce her either to exert her influence and strength of will over her father and her uncle, so as to obtain their consent to a marriage whose absurd inequality he was not capable of comprehending, or to consent to a clandestine union, and trust to her power at home for future forgiveness. The latter calculation was characteristic of the shallowness of Henry Hurst's judgment, and the narrowness of his view. He no more understood that with all her airy, gay, variable ways, her fascinating manner - Madeleine was highly principled, and totally incapable of contemplating such a sin against delicacy and propriety as a clandestine marriage, than he knew that her heart was irrevocably disposed of.

-

His scheme was assuming form, and extending itself. He was building his house of cards rapidly, and his whole mind was set upon its intricate fragility. How slight and insignificant were the obstacles, when he viewed them in his present sanguine frame of mind! No resistance on Alice's part could avail her; he had the power of forcing her to compliance. And then, what could be easier than for him to leave England, giving her to understand that he was

when he chose? Alnaschar's reverie was not more glowing, more vainglorious, better constructed from stage to stage, more vivid, or more baseless.

HENRY HURST left Carbury with the conviction that he had committed a blunder in making his proposition to Alice so ab-going abroad, to remain, and to return ruptly. He had said too much, and too little. The ferocity that was in him had led him to preface the proposition he had made with callous coarseness, and by that he felt he had secured his failure. But for that, he might be returning to London now, having made an agreement with her which should effectually prevent her being able to trace him in the brilliant and elevated sphere which he really believed himself destined to attain.

He had foiled himself by precipitation; and he would have been glad could he have recalled the step he had taken. What was in Alice's mind that had so changed her bearing and expression? Did she suspect him of another motive in addition to the cruel one he had avowed? She could know nothing of his proceedings beyond what he had told her; the very reproach she had

Henry Hurst had acquired many of the small talents of the Frenchmen with whom he had associated in Paris. He was a good manager in many senses in which the idea of managing at all would not have occurred to an Englishman; he knew the value of money, and had a keen perception of the inconvenience and the humiliation of debt. He was not likely, therefore, to plunge himself into embarrassment in taking such measures as he knew would be necessary for the conduct of his scheme. He had all a Frenchman's facility for the combination of economy with appearances, and all a Frenchman's power of concentrating his expenditure on himself.

The result of the practical application of those talents was satisfactory, and (Mrs. Haviland's arrival in town having been duly announced in the Morning Post) Horace Holmes's card, bearing an address in an unexceptionable street in St. James's, was among the first left at the door of the family mansion in Berkeley-square.

He had heard from Alice a few times, he had given her as an address the postoffice in the street in which he lived, and had replied to her brief letters in the coldest and most general terms. Neither had made any allusion, in writing to the other, to the terms on which they had parted. Alice lived in daily, hourly dread of her husband's reappearance to insist on the carrying out of his terrible proposal; her husband was only watching and waiting for the arrival of the hour when all should be ripe for the fulfilment of his intentions.

The peace in desolation which had been stealing over Alice's life for some time before her husband's last visit had been utterly routed by that event. The instinct of a woman and a wife had revealed to her an unavowed motive pervading the conduct of Henry Hurst.

He could have left me here, forgotten by him and unknown by all the world,' she would sometimes think, without saying anything about it; he almost does so now; he had only to remain longer away, to let me know less about him than I now know, and everything would have been as he wishes. But he wants to send me farther away, to hide me more effectually; — from some one person in particular, I am convinced, - from a woman! Well, he shall not do it; no, I am determined he shall not do it. I am powerless and at his mercy, God help me! but God will help me to some device, some line of conduct, which shall defeat him in this instance.'

In the mean time, the only thing Alice could do was to resume what had been the routine of her life before this sinister interruption.

interval of sea between the island and the coast, and the little pier where the boats lay when not employed; - her father's nearest, and conspicuous by reason of the gay red and green painted stripes with which it was adorned. The boatmen's cottages were under the brow of the little hill, and not in sight. Maggie watched Alice closely in her silent way, and she made two discoveries. The first was, that whenever she received a letter she was unusually troubled and pale for many hours afterwards; the second was, that she cried very much one day on getting a letter in a printed cover; and this surprised Maggie, because she had seen that same letter written by Alice herself a few days before, and why she should cry at getting it back the little girl could not understand. Maggie picked up the cover afterwards, and read the words Returned Letter' upon it, but they did not enlighten her. Only once Maggie saw the lady look pleased after getting a letter: such a strange one, with no capitals in the direction, and the stamps, of which there were several, in the wrong place. But Alice, seeing that Maggie looked curiously at the document, told her that French people had their own fashions in writing, and that Honorine-Maggie would remember that it was like Honorine her French doll was dressed- was not welleducated.

At the small seaside cottage, where simplicity and frugality reigned, the winter months wore themselves away but heavily.

These months passed very differently with Henry Hurst.

There was only one drawback this winter to the perfect prosperity of the Havilands: Julia was not so strong as she had hoped to be. The illness she had had in the autumn, though not serious in itself, seemed to hang about her obstinately, and to all but those who were in the habit of seeing her daily, and therefore did not observe her closely, she appeared much changed.

She was still remarkably handsome for Maggie Burton was able to be up now, her age; and the imposing dignity, the and to move about as much as she was ever suave grace which distinguished her, redestined to move about in this world; and mained unimpaired. It was in strength she a sorrowful spectacle the maimed child pre- was deficient. Without the least approach sented, as she limped painfully, aided by to coarseness, or to the blustering activity crutches, and dragged a permanently use with which very healthy women sometimes less limb after her. Her father generally threaten and overwhelm their weaker siscarried her up to the cottage in the morn- ters, Julia Haviland had possessed the ating, and left her with Alice, or, if she were tribute and the appearance of physical absent, in charge of the servant, and came power. Whatever she had chosen to do, to fetch her in the evening. From her fa- she had done without difficulty, without vourite seat, in a low basket-chair placed fatigue. The exertion of to-day did not close to the window of the little sitting-produce any effect upon her proceedings of room, the child could see Green Island, the to-morrow; she had seemed to hold her