It was Nan, who had risen from the sofa and stood before him, her face white as the gown she wore, her eyes wide with a new despair, her fingers clutching at the collar of her dress as if the swelling throat craved the relief of freedom from all bands. Sydney's heart contracted with a sharp throb of pain, anger, fear—he scarcely knew which was uppermost. It flashed across his mind that he had lost everything in life which he cared for most—that Nan would despise him, that she would denounce him as a sorry traitor to his friends, that the story—a sufficiently black one, as he knew—would be published to the world. Disgrace and failure had always been the things that he had chiefly feared, and they lay straight before him now.

"I heard," Nan said, with white lips and choking utterance. "I was asleep when you came, but I think I heard it all. Is it true? There was some one—some one—that you left—for me?—some one who ought to have been your wife?"

"I swear I never loved anyone but you," he broke out, roughly and abruptly, able neither to repel nor to plead guilty to the charge she made, but miserably conscious that his one false step might cost him all that he held most dear. To Nan, the very vagueness and—as she deemed it—the irrelevance of his answer constituted an acknowledgment of guilt.

"Sydney," she murmured, catching at the table for support, and speaking so brokenly that he had difficulty in distinguishing the words, "Sydney—I cannot pay this debt!"

And then she fell at his feet in a swoon, which at first he mistook for death.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

"SO SHALL YE ALSO REAP."

For some time Nan's life hung in the balance. It seemed as though a straw either way would suffice to turn the scales. Dead silence reigned in the house in Thurloe Square: the street outside was ankle-deep in straw: doctors and nurses took possession of Nan's pretty rooms, where all her graceful devices and gentle handicrafts were set aside, and their places filled with a grim array of medicaments. The servants, who loved their mistress, went about with melancholy faces and muffled voices; and the master of the house, hitherto so confident and self-reliant, presented to the world a stony front of silent desolation, for which nobody would have given Sydney Campion credit.

"Over-exertion or mental shock must have brought it on," said the doctor, when questioned by Lady Pynsent as to the cause of Mrs. Campion's illness.

"She can't have had a mental shock," said Lady Pynsent, decidedly. "She must have over-excited herself. Do you know how she did it, Sydney?"

"She fainted at my feet almost as soon as I saw her," said Sydney. "I don't know what she had been doing all the afternoon."

Nobody else seemed to know, either. The maid bore witness that her mistress had insisted on going downstairs, and it was generally supposed that this expedition had been too much for her strength. Only Sydney knew better, and he would not confide his knowledge to Lady Pynsent, although he spoke with more freedom to the doctor.

"Yes, she had bad news which distressed her. She fainted upon hearing it."

"That did the mischief. She was not in a condition to bear excitement," said the doctor, rather sharply; but he was sorry for his words, when he noted the distressed look on Sydney's face. He was the more sorry for him when it was discovered that he could not be admitted to the sick-room, for his appearance sent Nan's pulse up to fever-height at once, although she did not openly confess her agitation. The only thing that Sydney could do was to retire, baffled and disconsolate, to his study, where he passed the night in a state of indescribable anxiety and excitement.

When the fever abated, Nan fell into such prostration of strength that it was difficult to believe she would ever rise from her bed again. Weaker than a baby, she could move neither hand nor foot: she had to be fed like an infant, at intervals of a few minutes, lest the flame of life, which had sunk so low, should suddenly go out altogether. It was at this point of her illness that she fainted when Sydney once persuaded the doctor to let him enter her room, and the nurses had great difficulty in bringing her back to consciousness. After which, there was no more talk of visits from her husband, and Sydney had to resign himself to obtaining news of her from the doctor and the nurses, who, he fancied, looked at him askance, as blaming him in their hearts for his wife's illness.

"I can't make Nan out," said Lady Pynsent to him one day. "She is so depressed—she cries if one looks at her almost—and yet the very thing that I expected her to be unhappy about does not affect her in the least."

"What do you mean?" said Sydney.

"Why, her disappointment about her baby, of course. I said something about it, and she just whispered, 'I'm very glad.' I suppose it is simply that she feels so weak, otherwise I should have thought it unnatural in Nan, who was always so fond of children."

Sydney made no answer. He was beginning to find this state of things intolerable. After all, he asked himself, what had he done that his wife should be almost killed by the shock of finding out that he had behaved—as other men behaved? But that sort of reasoning would not do. His behavior to Milly had been, as he knew, singularly heartless; and he had happened to marry a girl whose greatest charm to him had been her tenderness of heart, her innocent candor, and that purity of mind which comes of hatred—not ignorance—of sin. A worldlier woman would not have been so shocked; but he had never desired less crystalline transparency of mind—less exquisite whiteness of soul, for Nan. No; that was the worst of it: the very qualities that he admired and respected in her bore witness against him now.

He remembered the last hours of his father's life—how they had been embittered by his selfish anger, for which he had never been able to make amends. Was his wife also to die without giving him a word of forgiveness, or hearing him ask her pardon? If she died, he knew that he would have slain her as surely as if he had struck her to the ground with his strong right hand. For almost the first time in his life Sydney found himself utterly unnerved by his anxiety. His love for Nan was the truest and strongest emotion that he had ever felt. And that his love for her should be sullied in her eyes by comparison with the transient influence which Milly had exercised over him was an intolerable outrage on his best and holiest affections and on hers. "What must she think of me?" he said to himself; and he was fain to confess that she could not think much worse of him than he deserved. It was a bitter harvest that he was reaping from seed that he himself had sown.

He was almost incapable of work during those terrible days when he did not know whether Nan would live or die. He got through as much as was absolutely imperative; but he dreaded being away from the house, lest that "change," of which the nurses spoke, should come during his absence; and he managed to stay at home for many hours of the day.

But at last the corner was turned: a little return of strength was reported, and by and by the doctor assured him that, although his patient still required very great care, the immediate danger was past, and there was at least a fair hope of her ultimate recovery. But he might not see her—yet.

So much was gained; but Sydney's spirits did not rise at once. He was conscious of some relief from the agony of suspense, but black care and anxiety sat behind him still. He was freer to come and go, however, than he had been for some time, and the first use he made of his liberty was to go to the very person whom he had once vowed never to see again—his sister Lettice.

She had written to him since his interview with her at Bute Lodge. She had told him of Alan's departure, and—to some extent—of its cause: she had given him the address of the lodgings to which she was now going (for a continued residence at Bute Lodge was beyond her means), and she sent him her sisterly love—and that was all. She had not condescended to any justification of her own conduct, nor had she alluded to the accusations that he had made, nor to his own discomfiture. But there had been enough quiet warmth in the letter to make him conscious that he might count on her forgiveness and affection if he desired it. And he did desire it. In the long hours of those sleepless nights and weary days in which he had waited for better news of Nan, it was astonishing to find how clearly the years of his boyhood had come back to him—those quiet, peaceful years in which he had known nothing of the darker sides of life, when the serene atmosphere of the rectory and the village had been dear to his heart, and Lettice had been his cherished companion and trusty comrade in work or play. It was like going back into another world—a purer and a truer world than the one in which he lived now.

And in these hours of retrospect, he came to clearer and truer conclusions respecting Lettice's character and course of action than he had been able to do before he was himself smitten by the hand of Fate. Lettice was interpreted to him by Nan. There were women in the world, it seemed, who had consciences, and pure hearts, and generous emotions: it was not for him to deny it now. And he had been very hard on Lettice in days gone by. He turned to her now with a stirring of affection which he had not known for years.

But when he entered Lettice's room, and she came to meet him, gravely, and with a certain inquiry in her look, he suddenly felt that he had no reason to give for his appearance there.

"Sydney!" she had exclaimed in surprise. Then, after the first long glance, and with a quick change of tone: "Sydney, are you ill?"

For he was haggard and worn, as she had never seen him, with dark lines under his eyes, and an air of prostration and fatigue.

"No, I'm very well. It's Nan—my wife," he said, avoiding her alarmed gaze.

"I am sorry—very sorry. Is she——"

"She has been on the brink of death. There is some hope now. I don't know why I came here unless it was to tell you so," said Sydney, with an odd abruptness which seemed to be assumed in order to mask some unusually strong feeling. "I suppose you know that the man Johnson came to see me——"

"Yes: they have gone," said Lettice, quickly. "They were married yesterday, and sailed this morning."

"Ah! Well, she was in the room when he—made his communication to me. I did not know it—Johnson never knew it at all. She had been asleep—but she woke and heard what he said. She fainted—and she has been ill ever since." He added a few words concerning the technicalities of his wife's case.

"Oh, Sydney!—my poor Sydney! I am so sorry," said Lettice, her eyes full of tears. For she saw, by his changed manner, something of what his trouble had been, and she instantly forgot all causes of complaint against him. He was sitting sideways on a chair, with his head on his hand; and when she put her arms round his neck and kissed him, he did not repulse her—indeed, he kissed her in return, and seemed comforted by her caress.

"I can't even see her," he went on. "She faints if I go into the room. How long do you think it will last, Lettice? Will she ever get over it, do you think?"

"If she loves you, I think she will, Sydney. But you must give her time. No doubt it was a great shock to her," said Lettice.

He looked at her assentingly, and then stared out of the window as if absorbed in thought. The result of his reflections seemed to be summed up in a short sentence which, certainly, Lettice had never expected to hear from Sydney's lips:—

"I can't think how I came to be such a damned fool. I beg your pardon, Lettice; but it's true."

"Can I be of any use to you—or to her?"

"Thank you, I don't think so—just yet. I don't know—" heavily—"whether she will want you some day to tell her all you know."

"Oh, no, Sydney!"

"You must do just what you think best about it. I shall put no barriers in the way. Perhaps she had better know everything now."

Then he roused himself a little and looked at her kindly.

"How are you getting on?" he said. "Writing as usual?"

"Yes, I am busy, and doing very well."

"You look thin and fagged."

"Oh, Sydney, if you could but see yourself!"

He smiled at this, and then rose to go.

"But you will stay and have tea with me? Do, Sydney—if only," and Lettice's voice grew low and deep, "if only in token that there is peace between us."

So he stayed; and, although they spoke no more of the matters that were dearest to their hearts, Lettice's bitterness of feeling towards her brother disappeared, and Sydney felt vaguely comforted in his trouble by her sympathy.

She did not tell him of the strange marriage-scene which she had witnessed the day before—when Milly, almost hysterical from over-wrought feeling, had vowed to be a true and faithful wife to the man who had pitied and succored her in the time of her sorest need: of Johnson's stolid demeanor, covering a totally unexpected fund of good-feeling and romance; or of his extraordinary desire, which Lettice had seen carried out, that the baby should be present at its mother's wedding, and should receive—poor little mite—a fatherly kiss from him as soon as he had kissed the forlorn and trembling bride. For Milly, although she professed to like and respect Michael Johnson, shrank somewhat from the prospect of life in another country, and was nervous and excitable to a degree which rather alarmed her mistress. Lettice confessed on reflection, however, that Johnson knew exactly how to manage poor little Milly; and that he had called smiles to her face in the very midst of a last flood of tears; and that she had no fear for the girl's ultimate happiness. Johnson had behaved in a very straightforward, manly and considerate way; and in new surroundings, in a new country, with a kind husband and good prospects, Milly was likely to lead a very happy and comfortable life. Lettice was glad to think so; and was more sorry to see the baby go than to part from Milly. Indeed, she had offered to adopt it; but Johnson was so indignant, and Milly so tearful, at the idea, that she had been forced to relinquish her desire. All this, however, she withheld from Sydney; as also her expedition to the station to see the little party start for Liverpool, and Milly's grief at parting with the forbearing mistress whom she had once deceived, and who had been, after all, her truest friend.

* * * * *

Nan began, very slowly, but surely, to amend; and Sydney, going back to his usual pursuits, seemed busier than ever.

But, in spite of himself, he was haunted night and day by the fear of what would happen next; of what Nan meant to do when she grew strong. Would she ever forgive him? And if she did not forgive him, what would she do? Tell the whole story to Sir John, and insist on returning to her brother's house? That would be an extreme thing, and Sir John—who was a man of the world—would probably pooh pooh her virtuous indignation; but Nan had a way of carrying out her resolves whether Sir John pooh-poohed them or not. And supposing that Nan separated herself from him, Sydney could not but see that a very serious imputation would be thrown on his character, even if the true story were not known in all its details. That mock marriage—which he had not at first supposed that Milly had taken seriously—had a very ugly sound. And he had made too many enemies for the thing to be allowed to drop if once it came to the light.

His career was simply at the mercy of two women—the Johnsons were not, he thought, likely to break silence—and if either of them should prove to be indiscreet or vindictive, he was a ruined man. He had injured and insulted his sister: he had shocked and horrified his wife. What Nan though of him he could not tell. He had always believed that women were too small-minded to forget an injury, to forgive an insult, or to keep silence regarding their husbands' transgressions. If Nan once enlisted Sir John's sympathies on her side, he knew that, although he might ultimately recover from the blow inflicted by his brother-in-law's offense and anger, his chance of success in life would be diminished. And for what a cause? He writhed as he thought of the passing, contemptuous fancy, for the indulgence of which he might have to sacrifice so much and had already sacrificed part of what was dearest in life to him. Yes, he told himself, he was at Nan's mercy, and he had not hitherto found women very ready to hold their hands when weapons had been put into them, and all the instincts of outraged vanity made them strike.

Sydney Campion prided himself on a wide experience of men and women, and a large acquaintance with human nature. But he did not yet know Nan.

* * * * *

The story which had been so suddenly unfolded to her had struck her to the earth with the force of a blow, for more than one reason, but chiefly because she had trusted Sydney so completely. She was not so ignorant of the ways of men as to believe that their lives were always free from stain; indeed she knew more than most girls of the weakness and wickedness of mankind, partly because she was well acquainted with many Vanebury working-people, who were her tenants, partly because Lady Pynsent was a woman of the world and did not choose that Nan should go about with her eyes closed, and partly because she read widely and had never been restricted in the choice of books. She was not a mere ignorant child, shrinking from knowledge as if it were contamination, and blindly believing in the goodness and innocence of all men. But this theoretical acquaintance with the world had not saved her from the error into which women are apt to fall—the error of setting up her lover on a pedestal and believing that he was not as other men. She was punished for her mistake, she told herself bitterly, by finding that he was even worse, not better, than other men, whose weaknesses she had contemned.

For there had been a strain of meanness and cruelty in Sydney's behavior to the girl whom he had ruined which cut his wife to the heart. She had been taught, and she had tried—with some misgiving—to believe that she ought to be prepared to condone a certain amount of levity, of "wildness," even, in her husband's past; but here she saw deliberate treachery, cold-blooded selfishness, which startled her from her dream of happiness. Nan was a little too logical for her own peace of mind. She could not look at an action as an isolated fact in a man's life: it was an outcome of character. What Sydney had done showed Sydney as he was. And, oh, what a fall was there! how different from the ideal that she had hoped to see realized in him!

It never once occurred to Nan to take either Sir John or Lady Pynsent into her confidence. Sydney was quite mistaken in thinking that she would fly to them for consolation. She would have shrunk sensitively from telling them any story to his discredit. Besides, she shrewdly suspected that they would not share her disappointment, her sense of disillusion; Sir John had more than once laughed in an oddly amused way when she dropped a word in praise of Sydney's high-mindedness and generous zeal for others. "Campion knows which side his bread's buttered," he had once made her angry by saying. She had not the slightest inclination to talk to them of Sydney's past life and character.

Besides, she knew well enough that she had no actual cause of complaint in the eyes of the world. Her husband was not bound to tell her all that happened to him before he met her; and he had severed all connection with that unhappy young woman before he asked her, Anna Pynsent, to be his wife. Nan's grievance was one of those intangible grievances which bring the lines into so many women's faces and the pathos into their eyes—the grievance of having set up an idol and seen it fall. The Sydney Campion who had deceived and wronged a trusting girl was not the man that she had known and loved. That was all. It was nothing that could be told to the outer world, nothing that in itself constituted a reason for her leaving him and making him a mark for arrows of scandal and curiosity; but it simply killed outright the love that she had hitherto borne him, so that her heart lay cold and heavy in her bosom as a stone.

So frozen and hard it seemed to her, that she could not bring herself to acknowledge that certain words spoken to her husband by the stranger had had any effect on her at all. In the old days, as she said to herself, they would have hurt her terribly. "You cruelly deserted her because you wanted to marry a rich woman." She, Nan, was the rich woman for whom Sydney Campion had deserted another. It was cruel to have made her the cause of Sydney's treachery—the instrument of his fall. She had never wished to wrong anyone, nor that anyone should be wronged for her sake. She would not, she thought, have married Sydney if she had known this story earlier. Why had he married her?—ah, there came in the sting of the sentence which she had overheard: "You wanted to marry a rich woman." Yes, she was rich. Sydney had not even paid her the very poor compliment of deserting another woman because he loved her best—he had loved her wealth and committed a base deed to gain it, that was all.

She was unjust to Sydney in this; but it was almost impossible that she should not be unjust. The remembrance of his burden of debt came back to her, of the bill that he could not meet, of the list of his liabilities which he had been so loath to give her, and she told herself that he had desired nothing but her wealth and the position that she could give him. To attain his own ends he had made a stepping-stone of her. He was welcome to do so. She would make it easy for him to use her money, so that he need never know the humiliation of applying to her for it. Now that she understood what he wanted, she would never again make the mistake of supposing that he cared for her. But it was hard on her—hard to think that she had given the love of her youth to a man who valued her only for her gold; hard to know that the dream of happiness was over, and that the brightness of her life was gone. It was no wonder that Nan's recovery was slow, when she lay, day after day, night after night, the slow tears creeping down her cheeks, thinking such thoughts as these. The blow seemed to have broken her heart and her will to live. It would have been a relief to her to be told that she must die.

Her weakness was probably responsible for part of the depth and darkness of her despair. She was a puzzle to her sister-in-law, who had been used to find in Nan a never-failing spring of brightness and gentle mirth. Lady Pynsent began to see signs of something more than a physical ailment. She said one day, more seriously than usual,

"I hope, Nan, you have not quarreled with your husband."

"Oh no, no," said Nan, starting and flushing guilty; "I never quarrel with Sydney."

"I fancied there was something amiss. Take my advice, Nan, and don't stand on your dignity with your husband. A man is ready enough to console himself with somebody else if his wife isn't nice to him. I would make it up if I were you, if there has been anything wrong."

Nan kept silence.

"He is very anxious about you. Don't you think you are well enough to see him to-day?" For Sydney had not entered Nan's room since that unlucky time when she fainted at his appearance.

"Oh no, no—not to-day," said Nan. And then, collecting herself, she added, "At least—not just yet—a little later in the afternoon, I mean."

"I'll tell him to look in at four," said Lady Pynsent.

So at four Sydney was admitted, and it would have been hard to say whether husband or wife felt the more embarrassment. Sydney tried hard to behave as though nothing were amiss between them. He kissed her and asked after her well-being; but he did so with an inward tremor and a great uncertainty as to the reception that he should meet with. But she allowed him to kiss her; she even kissed him in return and smiled a very little, more than once, while he was talking to her; and he, feeling his heart grow lighter while she smiled, fancied that the shadow of sadness in her eyes, the lifelessness of her voice and hand, came simply from bodily weakness and from no deeper cause.

After this first visit, he saw her each day for longer intervals, and realized very quickly that she had no intention of shunning him or punishing him before the world, as he had feared that she would do. She was so quiet, so gentle to him, that, with all a man's obtuseness where women are concerned, he congratulated himself on being let off so easily, and thought that the matter was to be buried in oblivion. He even wondered a little at Nan's savoir-faire, and felt a vague sense of disappointment mingling with his relief. Was he to hear no more about it, although she had been struck down and brought almost to death's door by the discovery of his wretched story?

It seemed to be so, indeed. For some time he was kept in continual suspense, expecting her to speak to him on the subject; but he waited in vain. Then, with great reluctance, he himself made some slight approach, some slight reference to it; a reference so slight that if, as he sometimes fancied, her illness had destroyed her memory of the conversation which she had overheard in the study, he need not betray himself. But there was no trace of lack of memory in Nan's face, when he brought out the words which he hoped would lead to some fuller understanding between them. She turned scarlet and then white as snow. Turning her face aside, she said, in a low but very distinct voice,

"I want to hear no more about it, Sydney."

"But, Nan——"

"Please say no more," she interrupted. And something in her tone made him keep silence. He looked at her for a minute or two, but she would not look at him and so he got up and left her, with a sense of mingled injury and defeat.

No, she had not forgotten: she was not oblivious; and he doubted whether she had forgiven him as he thought. The prohibition to speak on the subject chafed him, although he had previously said to himself that it was next to impossible for him to mention it to her. And he was puzzled, for he had not followed the workings of Nan's mind in the least, and the words, concerning his marriage with her and his reasons for it had slipped past him unheeded, while his thoughts were fixed upon other things.



CHAPTER XL.

"WHO WITH REPENTANCE IS NOT SATISFIED—."

Before the summer came, Mrs. Sydney Campion was well enough to drive out in an open carriage, and entertain visitors; but it was painfully apparent to her friends that her health had received a shock from which it had not by any means recovered. She grew better up to a certain point, and there she seemed to stay. She had lost all interest in life. Day after day, when Sydney came home, he would find her sitting or lying on a sofa, white and still, with book or work dropped idly in her lap, her dark eyes full of an unspoken sorrow, her mouth drooping in mournful curves, her thin cheek laid against a slender hand, where the veins looked strangely blue through the delicate whiteness of the flesh. But she never complained. When her husband brought her flowers and presents, as he still liked to do, she took them gently, and thanked him; but he noticed that she laid them aside and seldom looked at them again. The spirit seemed to have gone out of her. And in his own heart Sydney raged and fretted—for why, he said to himself, should she not be like other women?—why, if she had a grudge against him, should she not tell him so? She might reproach him as bitterly as she pleased; the storm would spend itself in time and break in sunshine; but this terrible silence was like a nightmare about them both! He wished that he had the courage to break through it, but he was experiencing the truth of the saying that conscience makes cowards of us all, and he dared not break the silence that she had imposed.

One day, when he had brought her some flowers, she put them away from her with a slight unusual sign of impatience.

"Don't bring me any more," she said.

Her husband looked at her intently. "You don't care for them?"

"No."

"I thought," he said, a little mortification struggling with natural disappointment in his breast, "that I had heard you say you liked them—or, at any rate, that you liked me to bring them——"

"That was long ago," she answered softly, but coldly. She lay with her eyes closed, her face very pale and weary.

"One would think," he went on, spurred by puzzled anger to put a long unspoken thought into bare words, "that you did not care for me now—that you did not love me any longer?"

She opened her eyes and looked at him steadily. There was something almost like pity in her face.

"I am afraid it is true, Sydney. I am very sorry."

He stood staring at her a little longer, as if he could not believe his ears. The red blood slowly mounted to his forehead. She returned his gaze with the same look of almost wistful pity, in which there was an aloofness, a coldness, that showed him as nothing else had ever done the extent of her estrangement from himself. Somehow he felt as though she had struck him on the lips. He walked away from her without another word, and shut himself into his study, where he sat for some minutes at his writing-table, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing, dumbly conscious that he was, on the whole, more wretched than he had ever been in the course of a fairly prosperous and successful life.

He loved Nan, and Nan did not love him. Well, there was an end of his domestic happiness. Fortunately, there was work to be done still, success to be achieved, prizes to win in the world of men. He was not going to sit down and despair because he had lost a woman's love. And so, with set lips and frowning brow he once more set to work, and this time with redoubled vigor; but he knew all the while that he was a very miserable man.

Perhaps if he had seen Nan crying over the flowers that she had just rejected, he might have hoped that there was still a chance of recovering the place in her heart which he had lost.

But after this short conversation life went on in the old ways. Sydney appeared to be more than ever engrossed in his work. Nan grew paler and stiller every day. Lady Pynsent became anxious and distressed.

"Sydney, what are you doing? what are you thinking about?" she said to him one day, when she managed to catch him for five minutes alone. "Don't you see how ill Nan is?"

"She looks ill; but she always says there is nothing the matter with her."

"That is a very bad sign. I hope you have made her consult a good doctor? There is Burrows—I should take her to him."

"Burrows! Why, he is a specialist!"

"Nan's mother died of decline. Burrows attended her."

Sydney went away with a new fear implanted in his heart.

Dr. Burrows was sent for, and saw his patient; but he did not seem able to form any definite opinion concerning her. He said a few words to Sydney, however, which gave him food for a good deal of reflection during the next day or two.

At the end of that time, he came to Nan's sitting-room with a look of quiet purpose on his face. "May I speak to you for a minute?" he began formally—he had got into the way of speaking very formally and ceremoniously to her now. "Can you listen to me?"

"Certainly. Won't you sit down?"

But he preferred to remain standing at an angle where she could not see his face without turning her head. "I have been talking to Dr. Burrows about you. He tells me, I am sorry to say, that you are still very weak; but he thinks that there is nothing wrong but weakness, though that is bad enough in itself. But he wishes me also to say—you will remember that it is he who speaks, not I—that if you could manage to rouse yourself, Nan, if you would made an effort to get stronger, he thinks you might do it, if you chose."

"Like Mrs. Dombey," said Nan, with a faint, cheerless smile.

"He is afraid," Sydney went on, with the air of one who repeats a lesson, "that you are drifting into a state of hopeless invalidism, which you might still avoid. Once in that state you would not die, Nan, as you might like to do: you would live for years in helpless, useless, suffering. Nan, my dear, it is very hard for me to say this to you"—his voice quivering—"but I promised Burrows, for your own sake, that I would. Such a life, Nan, would be torture to you; and you have still within your power—you can prevent it if you chose."

"It seems to me very cruel to say so," Nan answered, quietly. "What can I do that I have not done? I have taken all the doctors' remedies and done exactly as they bade me. I am very tired of being ill and weak, I assure you. It is not my fault that I should like to die."

She began to cry a little as she spoke. Her mouth and chin quivered: the tears ran slowly over her white cheeks. Sydney drew a step nearer.

"No, it isn't your fault," he said, hoarsely, "it is mine. I believe I am killing you by inches. Do you want to make me feel myself a murderer? Could you not—even for my poor sake—try to get stronger, Nan, try to take an interest in something—something healthy and reasonable? That is what Dr. Burrows says you need; and I can't do this thing for you; I, whom you don't love any longer," he said, with a sudden fury of passion which stopped her tears at once, "but who love you with all my heart, as I never loved in all my life before—I swear it before God!"

He stopped short: he had not meant to speak of his love for her, only to urge her to make that effort over her languor and her indifference which the great physician said she must make before her health could be restored. Nan lay looking at him, the tears drying on her pale cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes unusually bright; but she did not speak.

"If there was anything I could do to please you," her husband went on in a quieter tone, "I would do it. Would you care, for instance, to live abroad? Burrows recommends a bracing air. If you would go with me to Norway or Switzerland—at once; and then pass the winter at Davos, or any place you liked; perhaps you would care for that? Is there nothing you would like to do? You used to say you wanted to see India——"

"But your work!" she broke in suddenly. "You could not go: it is useless to talk of an impossibility."

"If it would make you better or happier, I would go."

"But the House?——"

"Nothing easier than to accept the Chiltern Hundreds," said Sydney.

"And your profession?" said Nan, raising herself on one arm and looking keenly at him.

She saw that he winced at the question, but he scarcely paused before he replied.

"I have thought it well over. I could go on practising when I came back to England; and in the meantime——I suppose you would have to take me abroad, Nan: I could not well take you," he said with a grim sort of jocularity, which she could not help seeing was painful to him. "If it did you good, as Burrows thinks it would, I should be quite prepared to give up everything else."

"Give up everything else," Nan murmured. "For me?"

He drew a long breath. "Well, yes. The fact is I have lost some of my old interest in my work, compared with other things. I have come to this, Nan—I would let my career go to the winds, if by doing so, I could give you back strength and happiness. Tell me what I can do: that is all. I have caused you a great deal of misery, I know: if there is any way in which I can——atone——"

He did not go on, and for a few moments Nan could not speak. There was color enough in her cheeks now, and light in her eyes, but she turned away from him, and would not let him see her face.

"I want to think over what you have said. Please don't think me ungracious or unkind, Sydney. I want to do what is best. We can talk about it another time, can we not?"

"Any time you like."

And then he left her, and she lay still.

Had she been wrong all the while? Had she of her own free will allowed herself to drift into this state of languor, and weakness, and indifference to everything? What did these doctors know—what did Sydney himself know—of the great wave of disgust and shame and scorn that had passed over her soul and submerged all that was good and fair? They could not understand: she said to herself passionately that no man could understand the recoil of a woman's heart against sensual passion and impurity. In her eyes Sydney had fallen as much as the woman whom he had betrayed, although she knew that the world would not say so; and in his degradation she felt herself included. She was dragged down to his level—she was dragged through the mire: that was the thought that scorched her from time to time like a darting flame of fire. For Nan was very proud, although she looked so gentle, and she had never before come into contact with anything that could stain her whiteness of soul.

She had told Sydney that she loved him no longer, and in the deadness of emotion which had followed on the first acuteness of her grief for her lost idol, and the physical exhaustion caused by her late illness, she had thought she spoke the truth. But, after all, what was this yearning over him, in spite of all his errors, but love? what this continual thought of him, this aching sense of loss, even this intense desire that he should suffer for his sin, but an awakening within her of the deep, blind love that, as a woman has said, sometimes

"Stirreth deep below"

the ordinary love of common life, with a

"Hidden beating slow, And the blind yearning, and the long-drawn breath Of the love that conquers death"?

For the first time she was conscious of the existence of love that was beyond the region of spoken words, or caresses, or the presence of the beloved: love that intertwined itself with the fibres of her whole being, so that if it were smitten her very life was smitten too. This was the explanation of her weariness, her weakness, her distaste for everything: the best part of herself was gone when her love seemed to be destroyed. The invisible cords of love which bind a mother to her child are explicable on natural grounds; but not less strong, not less natural, though less common, are those which hold a nature like Nan's to the soul of the man she loves. That Sydney was unworthy of such a love, need not be said; but it is the office of the higher nature to seek out the unworthy and "to make the low nature better by its throes."

Nan lay still and looked her love in the face, and was startled to find that it was by no means dead, but stronger than it had been before. "And he is my husband," she said to herself; "I am bound to be true to him. I am ashamed to have faltered. What does it matter if he has erred? I may be bitterly sorry, but I will not love him one whit the less. I could never leave him now."

But a thought followed which was a pain to her. If she loved him in spite of error, what of her own sense of right and wrong? Was she not in danger of paltering with it in order to excuse him? would she not in time be tempted to say that he had not erred, that he had done only as other men do?—and so cloud the fair outlines of truth which had hitherto been mapped out with ethereal clearness for her by that conscience which she had always regarded, vaguely but earnestly, as in some sort the voice of God? Would she ever say that she herself had been an ignorant little fool in her judgment of men and men's temptations, and laugh at herself for her narrowness and the limitation of her view? Would she come to renounce her high ideal, and content herself with what was merely expedient and comfortable and "like other people"? In that day, it seemed to Nan that she will be selling her own soul.

No, the way out of the present difficulty was not easy. She could tell Sydney that she loved him, but not that she thought him anything but wrong—wrong from beginning to end in the conduct of his past life. And would he be content with a love that condemned him? How easy it would be for her to love and forgive him if only he would give her one little sign by which to know that he himself was conscious of the blackness of that past! Repentance would show at least that there was no twist in his conscience, no flaw in his ethical constitution; it would set him right with the universe, if not with himself. For the moment there was nothing Nan so passionately desired as to hear him own himself in the wrong—not for any personal satisfaction so much as for his own sake; also that she might then put him upon a higher pedestal than ever, and worship him as a woman is always able to worship the man who has sinned and repented, rather than the man who has never fallen from his high estate; to rejoice over him as angels rejoice over the penitent more than over the just that need no repentance.

* * * * *

Sydney was a good deal startled when his wife said to him a few days later, in rather a timid way:

"Your sister has never been here. May I ask her to come and see me?"

"Certainly, if you wish it." He had not come to approve of Lettice's course of action, but he did not wish his disapproval to be patent to the world.

"I do wish it very much."

Sydney glanced at her quickly, but she did not look back at him. She only said:

"I have her address. I will ask her to come to-morrow afternoon."

"Very well."

So Nan wrote her note, and Lettice came.

As it happened, the two had never met. Lettice's preoccupation with her own affairs, Sydney's first resentment, now wearing off, and Nan's subsequent illness, had combined to prevent their forming any acquaintance. But the two women had no sooner clasped hands, and looked into each other's eyes, than they loved one another, and the sense of mental kinship made itself plain between them.

They sat down together on the couch in Nan's private sitting-room and fell into a little aimless talk, which was succeeded by a short, significant silence. Then Nan put out her hand and look Lettice's in her own.

"You know!" she said, in a whisper.

"I know—what?"

"You know all that is wrong between Sydney and myself. You know what made me ill."

"Yes."

"And you know too—that I love him—very dearly." The words were broken by a sob.

"Yes, dear—as he loves you."

"You think so—really?"

"I am quite sure of it. How could you doubt that?"

"I did doubt it for a time. I heard the man say that he married me because I was—rich."

"And you believed it?"

"I believed anything—everything. And the rest," said Nan, with a rising color in her face, "the rest was true."

"Dear," said Lettice, gently, "there is only one thing to be said now—that he would be very glad to undo the past. He is very sorry."

"You think he is?"

"Can you look at him and not see the marks of his sorrow and his pain upon his face? He has suffered a great deal; and it would be better for him now to forget the past, and to feel that you forgave him."

Nan brushed away some falling tears, but did not speak at once.

"Lettice," she said at last, in a broken whisper, "I believe I have been very hard and cold all these long months. I thought I did not care—but I do, I do. Only—I wish I could forget—that poor girl—and the little child——"

She burst into sudden weeping, so vehement that Lettice put both her arms round the slight, shaken figure, and tried to calm her by caresses and gentle words.

"Is there nothing that I could do? nothing Sydney could do—to make amends?"

"Nothing," said Lettice gently, but with decision. "They are happy now, and prosperous; good has come out of the evil, and it is better to forget the evil itself. Don't be afraid; I hear from them, and about them, constantly, and if ever they were in need of help, our hands would be the ones stretched out to help them. The good we cannot do to them we can do to others for their sakes."

And Nan was comforted.

* * * * *

Sydney came home early that evening; anxious, disquieted, somewhat out of heart. He found that Lettice had gone, and that Nan was in her sitting-room. He generally went up to her when he came in, and this time he did not fail; though his lips paled a little as he went upstairs, for the thought forced itself upon him that Lettice might have made things worse, not better, between himself and his wife.

The daylight was fading as he entered the room. Nan was lying down, but she was not asleep, for she turned her head towards him as he entered. He noticed the movement. Of late she had always averted her face when he came near her. He wished that he could see her more plainly, but she was wrapped in shadow, and the room was almost dark.

He asked after her health as usual, and whether Lettice had been and gone. Then silence fell between them, but he felt that Nan was looking at him intently, and he did not dare to turn away.

"Sydney," she said at last. "Will you come here? Close to me. I want to say something——"

"Yes, Nan?"

He bent down over her, with something like a new hope in his heart. What was she going to say to him?

"Sydney—will you take me to Switzerland?"

"Certainly." Was that all? "When shall we go?"

"When can you leave London?"

"To-morrow. Any time."

"You really would give up all your engagements, all your prospects, for me?"

"Willingly, Nan."

"I begin to believe," she said, softly, "that you do care for me—a little."

"Nan! Oh, Nan, have you doubted it?"

Her hand stole gently into his; she drew him down beside her.

"Dear Sydney, come, here. Put your arm right round me—so. Now I can speak. I want to tell you something—many things. It is Lettice that has made me think I ought to say all this. Do you know, I have felt for a long, long time as if you had killed me—killed the best part of me, I mean—the soul that loved you, the belief in all that was good and true. That is why I have been so miserable. I did not know how to bear it. I thought that I did not love you; but I have loved you all the time; and now—now——"

"Now?" said Sydney. She felt that the arm on which she leaned was trembling like a leaf.

"Now I could love you better than ever—if I knew one thing—if I dared ask——"

"You may ask what you like," he said, in a husky voice.

"It is not such a very great thing," she said, simply; "it is only what you yourself think about the past: whether you think with me that it is something to be sorry about, or something to be justified. I feel as if I could forget it if I knew that you were sorry; and if you justified it—as some men would do—oh, I should never reproach you, Sydney, but I would much rather die!"

There was a silence. His head was on the cushion beside her, but his face was hidden, and she could gather only from his loud, quick breathing that he was deeply moved. But it was some time before he spoke. "I don't try to justify myself," he said, at last. "I was wrong—I know it well enough—and—well if you must have me say it—God knows that I am—sorry."

"Ah," she said, "that is all I wanted you to say. Oh Sydney, my darling, can anything now but death come between you and me?"

And she drew his head down upon her bosom and let it rest there, dearer in the silent shame that bowed it before her than in the heyday of its pride.

* * * * *

So they were reconciled, and the past sin and sorrow were slowly blotted out in waters of repentance. Before the world, Sydney Campion is still the gay, confident, successful man that he has always been—a man who does not make many friends, and who has, or appears to have, an overweening belief in his own powers. But there is a softer strain in him as well. Within his heart there is a chamber held sacred from the busy world in which he moves: and here a woman is enshrined, with all due observance, with lights burning and flowers blooming, as his patron saint. It is Nan who presides here, who knows the inmost recesses of his thought, who has gauged the extent of his failures and weakness as well as his success, who is conscious of the strength of his regrets as well as the burdensome weight of a dead sin. And in her, therefore, he puts the trust which we can only put in those who know all sides of us, the worst side even as the best: on her he has even come to lean with that sense of uttermost dependence, that feeling of repose, which is given to us only in the presence of a love that is more than half divine.



CHAPTER XLI.

A FREE PARDON.

St. James' Hall was packed from end to end one summer afternoon by an eager mob of music lovers—or, at least, of those who counted themselves as such. The last Philharmonic Concert of the season had been announced; and as one of its items was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the crowd was, as usual on such an occasion, a great and enthusiastic one.

Even the dark little gallery near the roof, fronting the orchestra, was well filled, for there are music lovers (mostly those whose purse is lean) who declare that, though the shilling gallery is hot, and close, and dark, there is in all the room no better place for hearing the great waves of sound rolled out by the orchestra from the Master's mighty scores. And it was for this reason that Lettice Campion came up the narrow stairs that afternoon at ten minutes to three, and found, as she might have expected, that only a few seats against the wall remained empty. Into the nearest of these she dropped, rather exhausted by her climb and the haste that she had made; and then she noticed, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, that some one beside her had half turned round, and was looking earnestly into her face.

"Alan!"

The color sprang into Lettice's face: the roll of music that she carried dropped from her lap as she held out her hand. Alan returned her greeting, and then dived for her music, thus giving her a moment in which to recover her self-possession. When he came up again, she was still a little flushed, but she was smiling tranquilly.

"I am so glad to see you," she said simply.

"I don't know what impelled me to come this afternoon. I never thought that I should have this happiness." Then in a lower tone, "You don't mind my being here? You don't want me to go away?"

"No, no, why should I? It does not matter—here."

They had not seen each other at all for weeks, and had met only two or three times, and then for a few minutes only, since Alan left Bute Lodge in December. They corresponded freely and frankly, but Lettice had decreed, in spite of some murmurs from Alan, that they should not meet. Scandal had been busy with her name, and, until Alan obtained his divorce, it seemed better to her to live a very retired life, seeing almost nobody, and especially guarding herself against accusations of any close association with Alan Walcott.

"I had just posted a letter to you before I came out," he said. They were at the end of the last row of seats and could talk, before the music began, without any fear of being overheard. "It is as I expected, Lettice. There are great difficulties in our way."

She looked an interrogation.

"The length of time that has elapsed is an obstacle. We cannot find any proof of worse things than drunkenness and brawling during the last year or two. And of the events before that time, when I know that she was untrue to me, we scarcely see how to obtain absolute proof. You must forgive me for mentioning these things to you, but I am obliged."

"Yes, and there is no reason why you should not tell me everything," she said, turning her quiet eyes upon him with a look of such perfect trust that the tumult in Alan's mind was suddenly stilled. "But you knew that there would be difficulties. Is there anything else?"

"I hardly know how to tell you. She has done what I half expected her to do—she has brought a counter charge against me—against——"

"Ah, I understand. All the more, reason, Alan, why we should fight it out."

"My love," he said, in the lowest possible tone that could reach her ears, "if you knew how it grieves me that you should suffer!"

"But I am suffering with you," she answered tenderly; "and don't you think that I would rather do that than see you bear your suffering alone?"

Here the first notes of the orchestra fell upon their ear, and the conversation had to cease. For the next hour or so they had scarcely time to do more than interchange a word or two, but they sat side by side rapt in a strange content. The music filled their veins with intoxicating delight; it was of a kind that Lettice rejoiced in exceedingly, and that Alan loved without quite knowing why. The Tannhauser Overture, the Walkueren-Ritt, two of Schubert's loveliest songs, and the less exciting but more easily comprehensible productions of an earlier classical composer, were the chief items of the first part of the concert. Then came an interval, after which the rest of the afternoon would be devoted to the Choral Symphony. But during this interval Alan hastened to make the most of his opportunity.

"We shall have a bitter time," he murmured in her ear, feeling, nevertheless, that nothing was bitter which would bring him eventually to her side.

She smiled a little. "Leave it alone then," she said, half mockingly. "Go your own way and be at peace."

"Lettice! I can never be at peace now without you."

"Is not that very unreasonable of you?" she asked, speaking lightly because she felt so deeply. The joy of his presence was almost oppressive. She had longed for it so often, and it had come to her for these two short hours so unexpectedly, that it nearly overwhelmed her.

"No, dearest, it is most natural. I have nobody to love, to trust, but you. Tell me that you feel as I do, that you want to be mine—mine wholly, and then I shall fight with a better heart, and be as brave as you have always been."

"Be brave, then," she said with a shadowy smile. "Yes, Alan, if it is any help to you to know it, I shall be glad when we need never part."

"I sometimes wonder," he murmured, "whether that day will ever come!"

"Oh, yes, it will come," she answered gently. "I think that after our long days of darkness there is sunshine for us—somewhere—by and by."

And then the music began, and as the two listened to the mighty harmonies, their hands met and clasped each other under cover of the book which Lettice held, and their hearts seemed to beat in unison as the joyous choral music pealed out across the hall—

"Freude, schoener Goetterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligthum, Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng getheilt; Alle Menschen werden Bruder, Wo dein sanfter Fluegel weilt."

"I feel," said Alan, as they lingered for a moment in the dimness of the gallery when the symphony was over, and the crowd was slowly filing out into Regent Street and Piccadilly, "I feel as if that hymn of joy were the prelude to some new and happier life."

And Lettice smiled in answer, but a little sadly, for she saw no happier life before them but one, which must be reached through tortuous courses of perplexity and pain.

The dream of joy had culminated in that brief, impulsive, unconscious transmigration of soul and soul; but with the cessation of the music it dissolved again. The realities of their condition began to crowd upon them as they left the hall. But the disillusion came gradually. They still knew and felt that they were supremely happy; and as they waited for the cab, into which Alan insisted on putting her, she looked at him with a bright and grateful smile.

"I am so glad I saw you. It has been perfect," she said.

He had made her take his arm—more for the sake of closer contact than for any necessity of the crowd—and he pressed it as she spoke.

"It is not quite over yet," he said. "Let me take you home."

"Thank you, no. Not to-day, Alan. See, there is an empty hansom."

He did not gainsay her, but helped her carefully into the cab, and, when she was seated, leaned forward to clasp her hand and speak a parting word. But it was not yet spoken when, with a sharp cry, Lettice started and cast herself in front of him, as though to protect him from a danger which he could not see.

In the confused press of men and women, horses and carriages, which filled the street at this hour from side to side, she had suddenly caught sight of a never-forgotten face—a hungry face, full of malice, full of a wicked exultation, keen for revenge.

Cora Walcott, crossing the road, and halting for a moment at the central landing-place, was gazing at the people as they poured out of St. James' Hall. As Alan helped Lettice into the hansom and bent forward to speak to her, she recognized him at once.

Without a pause she plunged madly into the labyrinth of moving carriages and cabs; and it was then that Lettice saw her, less than three yards away, and apparently in the act of hurling a missile from her uplifted hand.

It was all the work of an instant. The woman shrieked with impotent rage; the drivers shouted and stormed at her; men and women, seeing her danger, cried out in their excitement; and, just as she came within reach of her husband's cab, she was struck by the shaft of a passing brougham, and fell beneath the horse's hoofs.

It was Lettice's hands that raised the insensible body from the mire. It was Alan who lifted her into an empty cab, and took her to the nearest hospital—whence she never emerged again until her last narrow home had been made ready to receive her.

Cora did not regain consciousness before she died. There was no death-bed confession, no clearing of her husband's name from the dishonor which she had brought upon it, no reawakening of any kind. Alan would have to go through the world unabsolved by any justification that she was capable of giving. But with Lettice at his side, he was strong enough, brave enough, to hear Society's verdict on his character with a smile, and to confront the world steadily, knowing what a coward thing its censure not unfrequently is; and how conscious courage and purity can cause it to slink, away abashed.

* * * * *

On a certain evening, early in the session of 1885, some half-dozen men were gathered together in a quiet angle of the members' smoking-room at the Oligarchy Club.

During the past day or two there had been unwonted jubilation in every corner of the Oligarchy, and with reason, as the Oligarchs naturally thought; for Mr. Gladstone's second Administration had suddenly come to an end. It had puzzled many good Conservatives to understand how that Administration, burdened by an accumulation of blunders and disasters, was able to endure so long; but at any rate the hour of doom had struck at last, and jubilation was natural enough amongst those who were likely, or thought they were likely, to profit by the change.

Sir John Pynsent and his friends had been discussing with much animation the probable distribution of the patronage which the see-saw of party government had now placed in the hands of the Conservative leader. Sir John, whose opinion on this subject was specially valued by his political associates, had already nominated the Cabinet and filled up most of the subordinate offices; and he had not omitted to bestow a place of honor and emolument upon his ambitious relative, Sydney Campion.

The good-natured baronet was due that evening at the house of Lord Montagu Plumley, and he hurried away to keep his appointment. When he had gone the conversation became less general and more unrestrained, and there were even a few notes of scepticism in regard to some of Sir John's nominations.

"Plumley is safe enough," said Mr. Charles Milton. "He has worked hard to bring about this result, and it would be impossible for the new Premier to pass him over. But it is quite another matter when you come to talk about Plumley's friends, or his friends' friends. I for one shall be very much surprised if Campion gets the solicitorship."

"He's not half a bad sort," said Tom Willoughby, "and his name is being put forward in the papers as though some people thought he had a very good chance."

"Ah, yes, we know how that kind of thing is worked. The point most in his favor is that there are not half-a-dozen men in Parliament good enough for the post."

"What is the objection to him?"

"I don't say there is any objection. He is not a man who makes many friends: and I fancy some of his best cases have been won more by luck than by judgment. Then he has made one or two decidedly big mistakes. He will never be quite forgiven for taking up that prosecution of Walcott for a purely personal object. I know the late Attorney was much put out when he found how he had been utilized in that affair."

"Pynsent seems to think him pretty sure of the offer."

"Just so; and if anyone can help him to it, Pynsent is the man. That marriage was the best thing Campion ever did for himself, in more ways than one. He wants holding in and keeping straight; and his wife has him well in hand, as everybody can see."

"They seem a very happy couple."

"He is devoted to her, that is plain enough; and I never thought he had it in him to care for anybody but himself. I met them last Easter at Dalton's place. They seemed to hit off extremely well."

"Oh, she has improved him; there is no doubt about that. She is a very charming woman. What on earth does Dalton do with himself at Angleford?"

"He has become an orchard man on a grand scale," said Willoughby. "Three years ago he planted nearly a hundred acres with the best young stocks he could find, and he says he has every apple in the Pomona worth eating or cooking."

"He has got over that affair with Campion's sister, I suppose?"

"I don't know that he has. Brooke Dalton's one of the finest fellows in existence: there's a heart in him somewhere, and he does not easily forget. I came upon him and Campion one day in the garden, and though they knew I was close to them they went on talking about her and her husband. 'You were always too hard on her, Sydney,' Brooke was saying, 'and now you have admitted as much.' 'I don't wish to be hard on her, but I can't bear that man,' Campion said—meaning Walcott, of course. 'Well,' Dalton said,' I am perfectly sure that she would not have stuck to him through thick and thin, so bravely and so purely, unless she had been convinced of his innocence. As I believe in her, I am bound to believe in him. Don't you think so?' he said, turning to me. 'I hope every one who knows her will show her the respect and reverence that she deserves. Now that they have come back to England, Edith is going to call on her at once.' Edith is his sister, you know: and she tells my mother that she called immediately."

"How did Campion take it?"

"Very well, indeed. He said, 'You were always a good fellow, Brooke, and I may have been mistaken.' New thing to hear Campion owning up, isn't it?"

"So the Walcotts have come back?" said Milton, with some excitement. "By Jove, I shall leave my card to-morrow. Of course, he was innocent. I knew all about it, for I defended him at the Old Bailey.—No wonder Campion is uncomfortable about it."

The idea seemed to divert Milton very much, and he chuckled over it for two or three minutes.

"From what my mother says," Willoughby continued, "people seem disposed to take them up. Her books, you know, are awfully popular—and didn't you see how well the papers spoke of his last poems? You mark my words—there will be a run upon the Walcotts by and by."

"Just the way of the world!" said Charles Milton. "Three or four years ago they would have lynched him. Poor devil! I remember when I was about the only man in London who refused to believe him guilty."

"One thing is plain enough," said Tom Willoughby. "He would have gone to the dogs long ago if it had not been for her. I have not come across many heroines in my time, though I have heard of plenty from other people; but I am bound to confess that I never heard of one who deserved the name better than Mrs. Walcott."

* * * * *

The world bestowed its free pardon upon Alan Walcott, and for the sake of her who had taught him to fight against despair and death he accepted graciously a gift which otherwise would have been useless to him. Inspired by her, he had built a new life upon the ruins of his past; and if, henceforth, he lived and labored for the world, it was only with the new motives and the new energy which she had implanted in him.

The house at Chiswick is now their own. There Alan and Lettice crown the joys of a peaceful existence by remembering the sorrows of other days; and there, in the years to come, they will teach their children the faith of human sympathy, the hope of human effort, and the charity of service and sacrifice.

THE END.