n either
side. He might, for that matter, write and inquire of Elizabeth; but his
instinct for sequestration had made the course difficult. Yet before he
left her she had said that for him to be absent from her wedding was not
as she wished it to be.

The remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not
Elizabeth and Farfrae who had driven him away from them, but his own
haughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. He had assumed
the return of Newson without absolute proof that the Captain meant to
return; still less that Elizabeth-Jane would welcome him; and with no
proof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if he had
been mistaken in his views; if there had been no necessity that his
own absolute separation from her he loved should be involved in these
untoward incidents? To make one more attempt to be near her: to go back,
to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for his
fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her love; it was
worth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself.

But how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves without
causing husband and wife to despise him for his inconsistency was a
question which made him tremble and brood.

He cut and cut his trusses two days more, and then he concluded his
hesitancies by a sudden reckless determination to go to the wedding
festivity. Neither writing nor message would be expected of him. She had
regretted his decision to be absent--his unanticipated presence would
fill the little unsatisfied corner that would probably have place in her
just heart without him.

To intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event
with which that personality could show nothing in keeping, he decided
not to make his appearance till evening--when stiffness would have worn
off, and a gentle wish to let bygones be bygones would exercise its sway
in all hearts.

He started on foot, two mornings before St. Martin's-tide, allowing
himself about sixteen miles to perform for each of the three days'
journey, reckoning the wedding-day as one. There were only two towns,
Melchester and Shottsford, of any importance along his course, and at
the latter he stopped on the second night, not only to rest, but to
prepare himself for the next evening.

Possessing no clothes but the working suit he stood in--now stained and
distorted by their two months of hard usage, he entered a shop to make
some purc