she had confessed her crime to him, had not felt more instinctively revolted than she did now, when she discovered the reality of his career, and laid bare his infidelities. Her brain seemed on fire, her heart was broken. The only thought possessing her was how to escape from the house where he was sleeping, with his wife, not six feet from where she stood. She felt it a kind of dishonour to breathe the same air as himself. She knew too much to stay under the same roof with him, even as one apart, unknown and dead

But, bad as he was, she loved him, and she would destroy this record of his guilt. No one but herself should ever know how deeply he had sinned. She would take that pocket-book far out on the fell, and bury it deep among the heather, where man should never find it; and thus keep his secret safe and his name still honoured. It was the last thing that she could do for him. She had loved him; for that love's sake she had sacrificed herself, and to keep his honour untouched had renounced him; and now she would shield him from discovery, and bury the evidence of his shame and sin out of the sight and ken of all till the Day of Judgment should reveal it. Poor Leam! what grief and what delusion her two great loves had brought her!

The house was still buried in sleep. Once she heard Adelaide move uneasily on her pillow and moan; and once Edgar woke up with a start and a deep-drawn breath, like a man dreaming of pain. But these sounds soon dropped into absolute quiet, and the house fell again into the stillness of a tomb. The silver mist still hung like a veil between earth and sky, and the world without was as noiseless as the world within. For the second time Leam stole softly down the stairs, unslid the bolts and bars, and passed out into the silence, the cold mist, and the dim distance.

She did not know where she went nor when she meant to stop. She had but one feeling-to escape; but one design-to hide for ever the evidence of Edgar's crime. So she went on, stumbling wildly up the rough fell road; when she halted and staggered and fell.

The morning broke soft and grey in a peaceful but not brilliant nor jocund Sabbath; a day which seemed like the subdued and tender echo of yesterday's bitterness of sorrow, bringing rest if not joy, and where, if there were no smiles, there were no tears. Haunted by his dreams, which had given him Leam always, Leam only, Edgar rose early and wandered about the place, taking the downward village way; but save their own carriage standing by the door of the "Blucher," he saw nothing of any interest to him. He was glad however to see the carriage, so that they could leave their homely shelter and push on to Carlisle. He was ill at ease here ;-ah! should he ever be more content? Had not he too parted with his summer, his sunshine, his happiness, and come into the grey gloom of eternal sorrow?

When he went back to the house he found Adelaide in deep distress about her flounces, torn, muddy, destroyed. Her soul lived in her ward

robe; dress was her life; and the destruction of her pretty travellinggown was to her an infliction quite as terrible in its own way as the destruction to Leam of her ideal, or as had been to Edgar the discovery of her guilt.

How could she wear such a rag as this? she said weeping, when her husband entered her room. What a miserable journey they had had! what a day it had been altogether! And this dreadful house-this room!-Look at the dirty windows, thick with dust and cobwebs-they could not have been cleaned for a year; the soiled curtains, the patched uncleanly counterpane; and, weeping afresh, her horrible gown!

To Adelaide, speckless, spotless Adelaide, dirt and disorder were crimes in those about her; when they touched herself they were degradation so deep as to be on a level with immorality.

Edgar listened to her lamentations with a man's wonder at a woman's personal woes; then quietly told her that he had sent for the carriage, which had put up at the village, and that she would soon have her maid and her travelling trunk, and so be out of her millinery misery. This so far consoled her that she left off weeping; though she still bewailed herself, and held that she had been specially ill-used of him and fate; she had her list of grievances off by heart, and she was minded that Edgar should learn to the full what she had suffered, and in that learning perhaps forget what she had inflicted.

It was strange how her comparatively small discomforts and not surprising peevishness jarred on her husband to-day. At one time he would have laughed, and comforted her with a man's good-humoured superiority to such minor matters as lace and muslin. Perhaps be would have liked her all the better for her care of her person; it was so far flattering to him. But to-day her petulance wore another aspect altogether, and set him at odds with her more than before. It was like the intrusion of the petty miseries and mean annoyances of daily life into the solemn story of a tragedy, the tender strains of a threnody; as indeed it was too truly!

1

Still perplexed at that vision of last night, and haunted by a mad idea which he could not dominate-feeling the presence of Leam, though he knew that she was not here, could not possibly by any jugglery of events, as he believed, be here-Edgar asked their uncouth hostess carelessly at their homely breakfast if she had anyone living with her beside the servant?

"Only a sort of a niece," said Keziah. "A kind of adopted daughter of my brother Emmanuel."

"Emmanuel! That is an unusual name," said Edgar.

"Aye, it's not a common sort, I reckon," she said. "Nor is our surname. Emmanuel Gryce isn't a name as is picked up at every street corner."

She laughed as she spoke. Like most Northerners, she had a large amount of family pride.

Edgar felt his face grow pale.

"Does your brother Emmanuel Gryce live at North Aston?" he asked.

"Aye, that's where he is just now, though he's a sad rambling sort of a body, and never bides long anywhere. But that's his home just now. Do you happen to know him?"

"Yes," said Edgar. "We live at North Aston, my wife and I. And your niece, his adopted daughter, is her name Gryce too?"

"No, she's one Leonora Darley," said Keziah, suspecting nothing. "I don't know where he fished her up, nor who are her forbears, but that's the name she goes by."

"Is she in the house?" he asked, looking down on his plate, not daring to trust his eyes, scarcely able to command his voice; Adelaide's cold blue eyes looking at him half in surprise, half in suspicion.

"Yes, she is in the house sure enough, abed;" answered Keziah. "She is only in bad health, isn't the poor lass, and when she's a mind to sleep we let her. She's not oft so late as this, and I'll be rousing her by-and-by."

"What is the matter with her health?" he asked.

66

"Eh, who knows! Your bits of lasses are always ailing," said Keziah. Mayhap a love trouble-most like. She's close though, and has not told me aught."

"You are wonderfully inquisitive about this young lady," said Adelaide with a forced laugh. "What interest can a perfect stranger have for you?"

But she too felt uneasy. It was not that she formulated Leam distinctly; nevertheless, there was a dim kind of fear, a nameless suspicion, and the image of Leam like a shadow in the background. She was not dead; this dreadful woman was the sister of that strange Mr. Gryce of Lionnet; and there was an adopted daughter of evidently unknown antecedents in bad health, living with her, and invisible. So far she could piece together the fragments of the mystery, and so far she was uneasy. How she longed to get away from this place! She had felt there was danger in it when she passed through the gates and stood by the door! Would the carriage never come? Should they never be able to escape?

No more however was said or done. Edgar held his peace. Being a man, a woman's sneer could control him, and the carriage, which had stopped at Monk Grange overnight, as we know, soon after this came up to take them on their journey. To Adelaide's unspeakable relief they got in without more being said of Miss Leonora Darley, Mr. Gryce's adopted daughter; and they set off leaving Miss Gryce so much impressed by their grandeur, and touzled Jenny so much taken up by their liberality, as to cause both to forget poor Leam's continued absence, strange as it was to her habits.

But Edgar regretted that they went without seeing this adopted

niece. It would have set his mind at rest if he had seen her. Now the moonlight vision that had come to him between sleeping and waking, that scent of lemon-plant, that tear on his hand, would ever remain a mystery, an undying fear, and a lifelong pain.

They wound slowly up the rough, steep, fell-side road; and presently Edgar, to lighten the load and also to free himself from Adelaide's presence for a time, got out to walk up the hill, and soon drew far ahead of the lumbering carriage.

As he walked on he saw at a distance something grey by the wayside. Backed by the russet-brown of the dying bracken, and the gold of the late gorse, that something grey came out in strange distinctness. Was it a stone jutting out into the roadway? No; it was not a stone; it looked more like a human figure than a rock.

He quickened his pace, walking rapidly. The village bells were chiming up from the church at the fell-foot, calling the weary workers to the Sabbath-day devotions, the peaceful service of the day of rest; the scattered sheep on the fell-side were bleating to each other, the faithful collies barking, and the distant cattle lowing. But all these sounds were far off and subdued, mere echoes of the life afar; near at hand it was absolute stillness-a stillness in fit accord with the sunless sky and the grey, dim, sombre day.

Edgar walked fast, ever faster; and now had distanced the carriage by half a mile or more. He came nearer, nearer to the figure lying on the road; and now so near that he knew it to be a woman, young, slight, with dark hair-a woman of condition, not a tramp nor a peasant.

A little child from a hind's hut near stood beside that prostrate figure. The freshening wind blew back the sunny curls from the wondering rosy face, and drove into a little cloud the clean white Sunday frock, with the bits of blue about the arms to mark the mother's loving pride in her child. Her dimpled hands were full of withered fern and dying heather, of ox-eye daisies and golden-headed ragwort. She had scattered handfuls over the woman lying asleep there by the wayside, but now she was standing wondering why she laid so still, and did not awake when she was called.

Edgar, breathless, heart-struck, knowing full well what was before him, strode up to the sleeping woman. He knelt on one knee and gently lifted the hidden face, the helpless body; pressing to his bosom tenderly, reverently, the dear head of his dead love. As he moved the body he drew her hand from the heather where it had been thrust, and took from it, clutched tight and rigid with death, the green velvet pocket-book which he had given seven years ago to Violet Cray-when they lived in St. John's Wood, under the name of Harrington.

He took it from her hand and concealed it in his own breast, hiding it just in time from Adelaide, coming up in the carriage.

She stopped and got out to find him thus-kneeling on one knee, supporting the dead body of Leam Dundas, holding to his breast the

pale dead face wet with his passionate tears, unresponsive to his despairing

caresses.

Adelaide laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.

"Is this manly?" she said in a cold voice. "You knew that she was here!"

"Do not speak of her!" he answered bitterly, turning away his head. "She loved me, and she is dead!"

"Dead!" she echoed, as much displeasure as natural horror in her

voice.

It was an offence to one like Adelaide that the girl whom she had always hated, but who had been in a sense her equal and companion, should have died with this tragic unconventionality-a poor lost creature lying by the wayside, like one of the waifs of the world for whom is neither love nor care, neither respectability nor decency. When people of Leam's condition die they should die in their beds, decently as befits the rational and well conducted, not out on a wild fell-top, drenched with the mists of night and stiffened stark with its frosts!

She made a movement as if she would have spoken; but Edgar, who read her heart, thrust her almost savagely aside.

"Silence!" he said. "You shall not blaspheme her! She was true and faithful, and if she sinned she has suffered and will be forgiven. She loved me-but she lies here;-and you are my wife!"

He bent his head and again kissed the pale face on his breast; then lifted her reverently to place her in the carriage.

As he stood up with his pitiful burden the church bells ceased ringing; and Alick, in his place, began the Morning Service with these words:

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."