fe did in the way
of eating, dinner might have been taken out as intact as it was taken
in.

In her own private apartment Miss Aldclyffe again pulled out the letter
of the morning. One passage in it ran thus:--

'Of course, being his wife, I could publish the fact, and compel him
to acknowledge me at any moment, notwithstanding his threats, and
reasonings that it will be better to wait. I have waited, and waited
again, and the time for such acknowledgment seems no nearer than at
first. To show you how patiently I have waited I can tell you that not
till a fortnight ago, when by stress of circumstances I had been driven
to new lodgings, have I ever assumed my married name, solely on account
of its having been his request all along that I should not do it. This
writing to you, madam, is my first disobedience, and I am justified in
it. A woman who is driven to visit her husband like a thief in the night
and then sent away like a street dog--left to get up, unbolt, unbar,
and find her way out of the house as she best may--is justified in doing
anything.

'But should I demand of him a restitution of rights, there would be
involved a publicity which I could not endure, and a noisy scandal
flinging my name the length and breadth of the country.

'What I still prefer to any such violent means is that you reason with
him privately, and compel him to bring me home to your parish in a
decent and careful manner, in the way that would be adopted by any
respectable man, whose wife had been living away from him for some
time, by reason, say, of peculiar family circumstances which had caused
disunion, but not enmity, and who at length was enabled to reinstate her
in his house.

'You will, I know, oblige me in this, especially as knowledge of a
peculiar transaction of your own, which took place some years ago, has
lately come to me in a singular way. I will not at present trouble you
by describing how. It is enough, that I alone, of all people living,
know _all the sides of the story_, those from whom I collected it having
each only a partial knowledge which confuses them and points to nothing.
One person knows of your early engagement and its sudden termination;
another, of the reason of those strange meetings at inns and
coffee-houses; another, of what was sufficient to cause all this, and so
on. I know what fits one and all the circumstances like a key, and shows
them to be the natural outcrop of a rational (though rather ras