nd read the letter a second time.
"Yes," he said, "there's nothing left for me but to go back. I'm too
poor and too old to hunt after them all by myself." He closed his eyes:
the tears trickled slowly over his wrinkled cheeks. "I've been a trouble
to Jemmy," he murmured, faintly; "I've been a sad trouble, I'm afraid,
to poor Jemmy!" In a minute more his weakness overpowered him, and he
fell asleep again.

The clock of the neighboring church struck. It was ten. As the bell
tolled the hour, the tidal train--with Midwinter and his wife among the
passengers--was speeding nearer and nearer to Paris. As the bell tolled
the hour, the watch on board Allan's outward-bound yacht had sighted the
light-house off the Land's End, and had set the course of the vessel for
Ushant and Finisterre.

THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK.

BOOK THE FOURTH.

I. MISS GWILT'S DIARY.

"NAPLES, October 10th.--It is two months to-day since I declared that I
had closed my Diary, never to open it again.

"Why have I broken my resolution? Why have I gone back to this secret
friend of my wretchedest and wickedest hours? Because I am more
friendless than ever; because I am more lonely than ever, though my
husband is sitting writing in the next room to me. My misery is a
woman's misery, and it _will_ speak--here, rather than nowhere; to my
second self, in this book, if I have no one else to hear me.

"How happy I was in the first days that followed our marriage, and how
happy I made _him_! Only two months have passed, and that time is a
by-gone time already! I try to think of anything I might have said
or done wrongly, on my side--of anything he might have said or done
wrongly, on his; and I can remember nothing unworthy of my husband,
nothing unworthy of myself. I cannot even lay my finger on the day when
the cloud first rose between us.

"I could bear it, if I loved him less dearly than I do. I could conquer
the misery of our estrangement, if he only showed the change in him as
brutally as other men would show it.

"But this never has happened--never will happen. It is not in his
nature to inflict suffering on others. Not a hard word, not a hard look,
escapes him. It is only at night, when I hear him sighing in his sleep,
and sometimes when I see him dreaming in the morning hours, that I know
how hopelessly I am losing the love he once felt for me. He hides, or
tries to hide, it in the day, for my sake. He is all gentleness, all
kindness;