ness, that
casting away of all care for justification, suddenly frightened her: it
came to her with the shadowy array of possible calamity behind
it--calamity which had ceased to be a mere name for her; and all the
infiltrated influences of disregarded religious teaching, as well as
the deeper impressions of something awful and inexorable enveloping
her, seemed to concentrate themselves in the vague conception of
avenging power. The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined
freedom she would create for herself in marriage, the deliverance from
the dull insignificance of her girlhood--all immediately before her;
and yet they had come to her hunger like food with the taint of
sacrilege upon it, which she must snatch with terror. In the darkness
and loneliness of her little bed, her more resistant self could not act
against the first onslaught of dread after her irrevocable decision.
That unhappy-faced woman and her children--Grandcourt and his relations
with her--kept repeating themselves in her imagination like the
clinging memory of a disgrace, and gradually obliterated all other
thought, leaving only the consciousness that she had taken those scenes
into her life. Her long wakefulness seemed a delirium; a faint, faint
light penetrated beside the window-curtain; the chillness increased.
She could bear it no longer, and cried "Mamma!"

"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, immediately, in a wakeful voice.

"Let me come to you."

She soon went to sleep on her mother's shoulder, and slept on till
late, when, dreaming of a lit-up ball-room, she opened her eyes on her
mother standing by the bedside with a small packet in her hand.

"I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to give you
this at once. The groom has brought Criterion; he has come on another
horse, and says he is to stay here."

Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate
enameled casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter
which contained a folded bit of colored paper and these words:--

Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal. I
enclose a check drawn in the name of Mr. Gascoigne, for immediate
expenses. Of course Mrs. Davilow will remain at Offendene, at least
for some time. I hope, when I come, you will have granted me an early
day, when you may begin to command me at a shorter distance.

Yours devotedly,

H. M. GRANDCOURT.

The check was