she was about to perpetrate; 'no more pride than Madame de Chantal had in her relations with Francis de Sales.'

The up-train by which most London-bound travellers of the superior or first-class rank were accustomed to depart from Hawleigh was a nine-o'clock express. She thought it more than probable that Mr. Forde would go to London as the preliminary stage of his journey, and it was just possible that he might go by that train. If she called at his lodging at eight o'clock, she would secure her desired interview; she knew his early habits, and that he had generally breakfasted and begun his day's work by that hour. Of what Mrs. Humphreys, the carpenter's wife, might say about this untimely visit, she thought nothing; being indeed, at all times, too impetuous for profound consideration of consequences.

She dressed herself quietly while Blanche was still asleep. They had a slip of a bath-room, converted from the oratory of some mediæval châtelaine, on one side of their tower; here Elizabeth made her toilet, and then crept softly out of the bedchamber without awakening her sister from halcyon dreams of new curates yet hidden behind the curtain of fate. She went down the narrow winding stair, and out by the lobby-door, unseen by so much as a servant; and walked, by field-paths and lanes that skirted the town, towards the tranquil domicile of Mr. Humphreys. She recalled that other summer morning nearly a year ago-good heavens, what a long year!-when she had gone by the same road to make the same kind of unauthorised visit, half in sport and half in earnest, defiant, reckless, eager to do something that would bring light and colour into her monotonous life, and desperately in love with the man she pretended to hold so lightly. Then she had gone to him with a proud sense of her power to conquer and bring him to her feet, as she had sworn to do the night before in the passion of wounded pride. Now she went humbled to the dust, convinced of her insignificance in the plan of his life; only anxious that he should not go away thinking worse of her than she deserved.

The street-door of the Humphreys' abode-radiant in the splendour of newly-polished brassplate and handle-was standing open as she approached. Mrs. Humphreys, engaged in conference with the butcher, occupied the threshold, and paused from her discourse with an astonished air at seeing Miss Luttrell.

That air, that look of surprise, awakened the girl to a sense of the singularity of her untimely visit; the peril of petty gossip and small rustic scandal in which she stood. She made a feeble attempt to protect herself from this hazard.

'Good-morning, Mrs. Humphreys,' she said with a friendly air. 'I have been for a before-breakfast walk round by the common. It is so nice after London. I have a message for Mr. Forde from

papa.

Do you think he would come down-stairs for a few minutes and hear all about it? I know he is a very early riser.'

'O, Miss Luttrell, what a pity! leastways if it's anything very particular. Mr. Forde went away by the mail-train last night.'

'He went last night!' Elizabeth repeated helplessly.

'Yes, miss. It wasn't like him to travel of a Sunday evening -after that moving sermon too; there wasn't a dry eye in the church, I do believe. But the ship he sails in-the Columbiusleaves Liverpool this afternoon, and there was no help for it. I do hope he'll have nice weather, poor dear gentleman!' added Mrs. Humphreys with a hopeful air, as if he had been about to cross the Straits of Dover.

This was a death-blow.

He had gone away, and carried with him to the other end of the world the conviction of her faithless

ness.

She went slowly homewards, wondering vaguely what she should do with the remnant of her life; how she was to live on for an indefinite number of years, and eat and drink and sleep, and pretend to be happy, now that he had vanished out of her existence for Then a new anger against him was slowly kindled in her breast. How could he have been so hard, so cruel, as to leave her thus, without one last word of compassion and forgiveness, without a line of farewell?

ever.

'He saw me in the church last night,' she thought, and yet could leave without one touch of pity. He can boast of the grandeur of his own prospects, the splendour of his own hopes, and he has not one thought for my broken life; he cares nothing what becomes of me.'

She brooded over this unkindness with deep resentment. What right had he to take possession of her soul, and then cast her off coldly to this beggarly divorcement' ?

'What does he imagine will become of me?' she said to herself. 'I suppose he thinks I shall marry Lord Paulyn in spite of his warning, and be miserable for ever afterwards. Or does he think I shall repent my sins and join some Protestant sisterhood; or die broken-hearted because of his unkindness? O, if I could only die! He might be sorry, perhaps, for that; if the news of my death ever reached his distant world; or if he were to come back to this place some day, and find my grave in the churchyard, and discover at last that I loved him well enough to die of his desertion.'

End of Book the Second.

Book the Third.

CHAPTER I.

'I am weary of my part.

My torch is out, and the world stands before me

Like a black desert.'

THRICE has the corn ripened on the hillsides and in the valleys round Hawleigh; thrice have come and gone all the pleasant sights and sweet sounds of summer-dog-roses blooming out their bright brief life in the tangled hedgerows; honeysuckle scenting the mild air of early autumn, and lingering late as if loth to leave the earth it adorned. Thrice have come the snows and rains and general discomforts of winter-the conventional jovialities of Christmas, church decorations, charity dinners, infant-school festivities, the annual cakes and ale, the slow-going Lent while the chilly new-fledged spring flutters its weak wings timidly, like a tender bird too soon expelled from its nest into a bleak world. All the seasons, with their unvarying duties the same things to be done over and over again every year have come and gone three times, and still Gertrude trudges to and fro among her poor, scattering leaflets of consolation in the shape of small gray-paper-covered tracts; and still Diana embroiders a little and sketches a little, and yawns and indulges her constitutional headache a great deal, and laments languidly that the Luttrells are not a particularly fortunate family; and still Blanche, the pert and lively, demands of the unanswering skies when Providence is going to do something for the Luttrells. There have been changes, however, at Hawleigh. One, a dismal change from the warmth and brightness of a comfortable easygoing life to the darkness and blankness of the grave. That good easy man, Wilmot Luttrell, has slipped out of existence almost as easily as he slipped through it. His daughters found him in his study one dark November morning, two years ago, stricken with paralysis and a partial death, from which he was never to recover. He lingered long in this doubtful state, helpless, patient, mild as he had ever been; was tenderly nursed by the four girls, who had at least agreed in loving their father dearly at the last-had lingered and been conscious of their love and care, until a second stroke made all a blank. From this he never revived, but expired in that dull sleep, unconscious of the end; so closing a life which had been as gentle and harmless as a child's.

This loss-a profound affliction itself-was made all the heavier by the fact that it left the four girls a difficult problem to solve in the one all-important question how they were to live. The entire fortune which their father left behind him amounted to about three hundred a year, exclusive of the vicarage furniture, which, in its de