l you are a man of
honor."

When Robert went in, she rose and tottered to him, and fell on his neck.
She saw it was the death-bed of their love, and she kissed his eyes, and
clung to him. They moaned over each other, and clung to each other in
mute despair.

The general came back, and he and Robert took Helen, shivering and
fainting, to the boat. As the boat put off, she awoke from her stupor,
and put out her hands to Robert with one piercing cry.

They were parted.

CHAPTER LIII.

IN that curious compound, the human heart, a respectable motive is
sometimes connected with a criminal act. And it was so with Joseph Wylie.
He had formed an attachment to Nancy Rouse, and her price was two
thousand pounds.

This Nancy Rouse was a character. She was General Rolleston's servant for
many years; her place was the kitchen. But she was a woman of such
restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that
she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost,
except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to
sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the _London
Journal,_ fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read. She
supported a sick mother out of her wages, aided by a few presents of
money and clothes from Helen Rolleston, who had a great regard for Nancy,
and knew what a hard fight she had to keep a sick woman out of her twenty
pounds a year.

In love, Nancy was unfortunate; her buxom looks and sterling virtues were
balanced by a provoking sagacity, and an irritating habit of speaking her
mind. She humbled her lovers' vanity, one after another, and they fled.
Her heart smarted more than once.

Nancy was ambitious; and her first rise in life took place as follows:
When the Rollestons went to Australia, she had a good cry at parting with
Helen; but there was no help for it. She could not leave her mother.
However, she told Helen she could not stomach any other service, and,
since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is
sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence
into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman.
Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in
the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and
thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd
five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, a