having glided unnoticed up the main stairway. She was so excited, it was
equally dangerous to send her away or to admit her, and he drew her in,
darkening the windows and locking the door. On the whole, it was not so
bad as he expected; at least, there was less violence and more despair.
She covered her face with her hands, and writhed in anguish, when she
said that she had utterly degraded herself by this loveless marriage.
She scarcely mentioned her husband. She made no complaint of him, and
even spoke of him as generous. It seemed as if this made it worse, and
as if she would be happier if she could expend herself in hating him.
She spoke of him rather as a mere witness to some shame for which she
herself was responsible; bearing him no malice, but tortured by the
thought that he should exist.

Then she turned on Malbone. "Philip, why did you ever interfere with my
life? I should have been very happy with Antoine if you had let me marry
him, for I never should have known what it was to love you. Oh! I wish
he were here now, even he,--any one who loved me truly, and whom I could
love only a little. I would go away with such a person anywhere, and
never trouble you and Hope any more. What shall I do? Philip, you might
tell me what to do. Once you told me always to come to you."

"What can you do?" he asked gloomily, in return.

"I cannot imagine," she said, with a desolate look, more pitiable than
passion, on her young face. "I wish to save Hope, and to save my--to
save Mr. Lambert. Philip, you do not love me. I do not call it love.
There is no passion in your veins; it is only a sort of sympathetic
selfishness. Hope is infinitely better than you are, and I believe she
is more capable of loving. I began by hating her, but if she loves you
as I think she does, she has treated me more generously than ever one
woman treated another. For she could not look at me and not know that I
loved you. I did love you. O Philip, tell me what to do!"

Such beauty in anguish, the thrill of the possession of such love, the
possibility of soothing by tenderness the wild mood which he could not
meet by counsel,--it would have taken a stronger or less sympathetic
nature than Malbone's to endure all this. It swept him away; this
revival of passion was irresistible. When her pent-up feeling was
once uttered, she turned to his love as a fancied salvation. It was a
terrible remedy. She had never looked more beautiful, and yet she seemed
to