the door open for her to pass. A pang of fear, nay remorse, came over Agatha.

"Speak," she cried-"if only one word, speak!"

His lips moved, as though framing an inarticulate "No," and then closed again in that iron line. He still stood holding the door.

Hardly knowing what she did, Agatha sprang past the threshold, and tottered a few steps on. Then turning, she saw the door shut behind her, slowly, noiselessly, but it was shut. She felt as if the door of hope had been shut upon her heart.

She turned again, and fled away.

CHAPTER VII.

IT was late afternoon. The rain had ceased, and glowed into one of those soft October days, so exquisitely sunny and fair. The light glimmered through the closed Venetian blinds of "Anne's room," and danced on the carpet and about Agatha's feet as she sat, quiet at last, and tried to remember how she had come and how long she had been there. She had seen no one; nobody ever came into "Anne's room."

The dressing-bell rang-the only sound she had heard in the house for hours.

She started up, waking to the frightful certainty that all was real-that the ways of the household were going on just as

usual that she must rouse up, no matter staggering under what burden of misery, and go through her daily part as if nothing had happened, and nothing was about to happen.

Nothing? when this day, perhaps this same hour, must decide one of two thingswhether she was a wretched wife, bound for life to a man who married her solely for mercenary motives, or whether she was a wife—perhaps in this even more wretched-who had so wronged and insulted her husband that nothing ever could win his forgiveness or restore his love. His love, which, as she now dimly began to see, and shuddered in the seeing, was becoming to her the most precious thing in existence.

Never, until she sat there, quite alone, and feeling what it was to be left alone, after being so watched and cherished—never until now had she understood what the world would be to her if doomed to question her husband's honour or to outlive her husband's love.

"It must have been all a dream," she said, moving her cold fingers to and fro over her forehead. "He never could have wronged me so, or I him. He must surely explain, and I will ask his pardon for what I said in my passion-Unless, indeed, my accusation were true."

But she could not think of that possibility now-it maddened her.

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"I shall meet him soon.

I wonder how he will meet me. That will decide all. Hark!"

She listened with a vague expectation of footsteps at the door. But no one came.

" I suppose he is in his room still-our room." And all the solemn union of married life-the perpetual presence, the never parting night or day, which makes dissension in that tie more awful than in any other human bond-rushed upon her with unutterable terror.

"If he has deceived and wronged me, how shall I endure his sight? If I have outraged

him, and he will not forgive me—oh, what will become of me?"

She heard various bells ringing throughout the house, and knew that she had no time to lose. She rose up, feebly, with that aching numbed feeling which strong agitation leaves in the whole frame, and tottered to the mirror.

"I must look at myself, to see that there is nothing strange about me, in case I meet any one in the passages.-Oh, what a face!"

It was sallow, blanched, with dark shadows round the eyes, and dark lines drawn everywhere. That first storm of wild passionthat agony of remorse following, had left indelible marks. She seemed ten years older since she had last beheld herself, which was when she pulled out her long curls in the morning. She pulled them out mechanically now, trying to make of them a screen to hide. the poor face that she had used to fancy they adorned. Then she flew like a frightened creature along the passages, and without