eath, rather than
forfeit your fair name and your good conscience; for be assured that the
alternative, if you do rush on to it, will be found worse than death.

Poor thing--poor Lady Isabel! She had sacrificed husband, children,
reputation, home, all that makes life of value to woman. She had
forfeited her duty to God, had deliberately broken his commandments, for
the one poor miserable mistake of flying with Francis Levison. But the
instant the step was irrevocable, the instant she had left the barrier
behind, repentance set in. Even in the first days of her departure, in
the fleeting moments of abandonment, when it may be supposed she might
momentarily forget conscience, it was sharply wounding her with its
adder stings; and she knew that her whole future existence, whether
spent with that man or without him, would be a dark course of gnawing
retribution.

Nearly a year went by, save some six or eight weeks, when, one morning
in July, Lady Isabel made her appearance in the breakfast-room.
They were staying now at Grenoble. Taking that town on their way to
Switzerland through Savoy, it had been Captain Levison's pleasure to
halt in it. He engaged apartments, furnished, in the vicinity of the
Place Grenette. A windy, old house it was, full of doors and windows,
chimneys and cupboards; and he said he should remain there. Lady Isabel
remonstrated; she wished to go farther on, where they might get quicker
news from England; but her will now was as nothing. She was looking like
the ghost of her former self. Talk of her having looked ill when she
took that voyage over the water with Mr. Carlyle; you should have seen
her now--misery marks the countenance worse than sickness. Her face was
white and worn, her hands were thin, her eyes were sunken and surrounded
by a black circle--care was digging caves for them. A stranger might
have attributed these signs to the state of her health; _she_ knew
better--knew that they were the effects of her wretched mind and heart.

It was very late for breakfast, but why should she rise early only to
drag through another endless day? Languidly she took her seat at the
table, just as Captain Levison's servant, a Frenchman whom he had
engaged in Paris, entered the room with two letters.

"_Point de gazette_, Pierre?" she said.

"_Non, miladi_."

And all the time the sly fox had got the _Times_ in his coat pocket.
But he was only obeying the orders of his master. It had been Captain
Levis