"My lord has shut himself up and seen no one since he heard of the death. I did not think he had so much feeling left. It has broken him a great deal.”

"I always knew it would come home to him, sooner or later," said Nanny; "but my mistress had recovered from all the evil he had brought upon her, long before she was taken away, so far as being unhappy was concerned. She had no cause to reproach herself, and it is only that which makes sorrow endless."

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My lord bid me ask you, if I had the opportunity, whether she left any message with you for him?"

"Tell your lord that my mistress never named his name, and it is my opinion she had allowed him to pass from her mind as one not worth remembering."

"He has never properly been friends with himself since he left her. He repented

of it once, and that was always. He has taken the news of her death very hard."

"Maybe he thinks his own turn will come next," said Nanny, sarcastically; "for do not think he is one to be sorry about anything that does not concern himself."

"He bid me inquire at what time the funeral was to leave the house. It is my opinion that he intends to follow it."

"He did his best to send her to the grave when she was in the prime of life, and it is just mockery to try to ease his conscience by following her funeral at this time of day; and he may learn what he wants to know from somebody else, for I will not tell him."

Nanny's heart had always been filled with a deadly indignation, and this opportunity of giving it utterance was a consolation in the midst of her grief.

The messenger departed, and apparently obtained the requisite information elsewhere; for the next day, when the cortége left the house, it was joined by a close dark chariot, with a coronet on the panels. Inside, there was an old, pale, stern-looking man, who gazed straight before him, with a dreamy, vacant gaze. He was thinking of the past more than the present; of the days when he and Margaret were in Italy, and she had been the wife of his youth. The difference that comes in life is oftentimes nearly as great as that between life and death. He had done a grievous wrong to the woman to whom he had given the strongest pledges that could induce one human being to trust another, and now, what remained to him of all the objects for which he had broken his faith? To what purpose had been all the waste he had made of that inner life which makes the

truth and beauty of what is seen? Verily, this world passes away, and the grace and the fashion of it perishes.

All his past life looked so near and so clear, it seemed as though he could reach it; but the hundred years that lie before us, are nearer than the moment that has just passed.

In the household Margaret had left, life continued its resistless sweep. The gap she had left was even now beginning to be drawn together. Every day brought its own incidents, which arranged themselves into completeness without any reference to her who had been.

Charles Herbert continued very ill, though the sharpness of his attack had subsided into a nervous irritable debility. His one great anxiety appeared to be the safety of a small portfolio which he kept constantly under his pillow or about his

person; manifesting remarkable uneasiness when anyone chanced to glance towards it. The eyes of Constance, which were anxiously fixed upon him, seemed particularly to importune him. He expressed the most nervous impatience to remove to the Chauntry, but, besides his illness, there were affairs connected with Margaret's Will which obliged them to remain some time in town.

Two days after the funeral, the Harrops arrived. They had found the letter that was awaiting them at home, and turned round their horses' heads, and travelled as fast as possible to reach Constance. The sight of her friend roused Constance from her apathy, and unlocked the fountain of her brain; her tears flowed without restraint, and seemed as though they would never

cease.

Their idea had been to take her home